1111

2111 Farmers and Village Life in

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Twentieth-century Japan
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2 This is a book about rural Japan from the early 1900s, when the majority
3111 of Japanese were farmers, to the end of the twentieth century, when
4 farmers formed only a very small proportion of the Japanese labor force
5 and the future of domestic agriculture itself was uncertain. Although atten-
6 tion is paid to the changing economics of agriculture over time and to
7 the policies of the Japanese state, the emphasis throughout is on farmers
8 themselves and the ways in which they have sought, individually and
9 collectively, to sustain and improve their lives. This ‘rice roots’ approach
20111 seeks to bring the rural Japan of the past and present to life, and to suggest
1 that many of the characterizations of farmers that appear in the general
2 literature about modern Japan – in particular, those which stress their
3 innate conservatism, their exceptional enthusiasm for militarism and
4 aggression in the 1930s, and their cosseted existence in a regime of
5111 agricultural subsidies after 1945 – distort a much more diverse and com-
6 plicated reality.
7 The contributors include six Japanese scholars, some of whose research
8 appears in English for the first time, and five western scholars with
9 established reputations in the history, sociology and anthropology of
30111 twentieth-century rural Japan. Their analyses should prove of consider-
1 able interest not only to scholars specializing in other spheres of modern
2 Japanese studies, but also to those working on the past and present of
3 agriculture, farmers and rural communities elsewhere in the developed
4 and developing world.
5
6 Ann Waswo is Lecturer in Modern Japanese History at the University
7 of Oxford, a member of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, and a
8 fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford.
9
40111 Nishida Yoshiaki is Emeritus Professor, University of Tokyo, and
1 Professor in the Faculty of Economics, Kanazawa University, Japan.
2111
1111
2111 Farmers and Village Life in
3
4 Twentieth-century Japan
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3111 Edited by Ann Waswo and
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Nishida Yoshiaki
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20111
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5111
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30111
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First published 2003
by RoutledgeCurzon
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by RoutledgeCurzon
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Selection and editorial matter © 2003 Edited by Ann Waswo and

Nishida Yoshiaki; individual chapters © the contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted

or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with

regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and
cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or
omissions that may be made.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Farmers and village life in twentieth-century Japan/edited by
Ann Waswo and Nishida Yoshiaki.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Farm life – Japan – History – 20th century. 2. Villages –
Japan – History – 20th century. 3. Farmers – Japan – History –
20th century. I. Waswo, Ann. II. Yoshiaki, Nishida, 1940–
HT421.F348 2003
307.76′2′0952 – dc21 2002073979

ISBN 0-203-41772-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-41917-0 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0–7007–1748–X (Print Edition)
1111
2111 Contents
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 List of illustrations vii
4 Notes on contributors ix
5 Acknowledgments xi
6
7 1 Introduction 1
8 ANN WASWO
9
20111 2 Dimensions of change in twentieth-century rural Japan 7
1 NISHIDA YOSHIAKI
2
3 3 The women of rural Japan: an overview of the
4 twentieth century 38
5111 ØKADO MASAKATSU
6
7 4 The impact of the local improvement movement on
8 farmers and rural communities 60
9 TSUTSUI MASAO

30111
1 5 In search of equity: Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 79
ANN WASWO
2
3 6 Building the model village: rural revitalization and the
4 Great Depression 126
5 KERRY SMITH
6
7 7 Securing prosperity and serving the nation: Japanese
8 farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 156
9 SANDRA WILSON
40111
1 8 Colonies and countryside in wartime Japan 175
2111 MORI TAKEMARO
vi Contents
9 Part-time farming and the structure of agriculture
in postwar Japan 199
RAYMOND A. JUSSAUME JR

10 Local conceptions of land and land use and the reform

of Japanese agriculture 221
IWAMOTO NORIAKI

11 Agricultural public works and the changing mentality

of Japanese farmers in the postwar era 244
KASE KAZUTOSHI

12 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 267

JOHN KNIGHT

13 Whither rural Japan? 285

NISHIDA YOSHIAKI AND ANN WASWO

Index 293
1111
2111 Illustrations
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4 Tables
5 2.1 Changes in rice yields, 1910–21 13
6 2.2 Rice farming operations by the Nishiyama family, 1911
7 and 1921–44 15
8 2.3 Tenant unions and tenancy disputes, 1920–37 17
9 2.4 Hamlet meetings (yoriai) in Koshin, 1942–60 26
20111 2.5 Voter turnout in Lower House elections, 1946–60 27
1 2.6 Voting rates for progressive and conservative parties,
2 1947–60 28
3 3.1 Percentage of women among those primarily employed
4 in farming 39
5111 3.2 Hours of work performed by male and female members
6 of farm households, 1933 40
7 3.3 Allocation of tasks in four farm households in Niigata
8 Prefecture, 1915 42
3.4 Work performed by women in three farm households in
9
Ibaraki Prefecture, 1913 43
30111
3.5 Labor performed by family members, 1950 44
1 3.6 Changes in the employed population by industry and
2 gender, 1936–47 49
3 6.1 Summary of economic revitalization planning
4 (selected crops), 1932–36 141
5 8.1 Prefectural origins of emigrants to Manchuria 184
6 8.2 Emigrants from Yamato Village, 1941 186
7 8.3 Views on the necessity of emigration to Manchuria,
8 Ibaraki Prefecture, as surveyed in September 1936 190
9 8.4 Employment found by the 25 tour members who became
40111 emigrants 196
1 9.1 Pluriactivity in prewar Japanese farm households 205
2111 9.2 Effects of the Japanese land reform 207
viii Illustrations
9.3 The mechanization and productivity of Japanese
agriculture, pre- and postwar 208
9.4 Pluriactivity in Japanese farm households, 1906–95 211
10.1 Results of surveys of farm communities, 1970–90 236
10.2 The ie consciousness of farmers 238
10.3 The mura consciousness of farmers 240
11.1 State purchase price for rice, 1950–99 251
11.2 Hours of labor per 0.1 hectare to grow rice, by scale
of cultivation 252
11.3 Percentage of adjusted rice paddy fields by agricultural
region, 1963 and 1993 254
11.4 Agricultural income and the cost of land improvement
works to farmers, 1965–98 258
11.5 Cost of land improvement works and irrigation maintenance
expenses to farmers by their scale of cultivation 259
11.6 State spending on agricultural public works, 1967–98 264

Figures
3.1 How rural women evaluate farming: an international
comparison of Japan, France, the United States and
Thailand 56
3.2 Ownership of assets within the family 57
3.3 Degree of responsibility in farming and home for rural
women 58
6.1 A performance of the Economic Revitalization drama
‘Sandanbatake no kyødai’ by members of the industrial
cooperative in Osogi village 129
8.1 Japanese emigrants by destination 179
10.1 Value of agricultural land sales and the ratio of that value
to the total value of agricultural production, 1960–96 233
11.1 Effects of land adjustment 247

Plates
2.1 Nishiyama Køichi, aged 18 16
3.1 A bountiful rice harvest in Niigata, 1954 52
3.2 Woman at work with a pitchfork, Ibaraki, 1961 54
8.1 Settlers from Yamagata Prefecture in Manchuria, 1943 192
9.1 Bringing in the rice crop with a combine harvester,
Gumma, 1978 209
9.2 Pesticide spraying in a tea field, Kagoshima, 1987 210
9.3 Feeding the chickens, Saitama, 1953 212
1111
2111 Notes on contributors
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 Iwamoto Noriaki (Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics in
4 the Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University
5 of Tokyo) is now doing comparative studies of rural communities in
6 Japan and Indonesia.
7
8 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr (Associate Professor in the Department of
9 Rural Sociology, Washington State University) continues research
20111 on the political sociology of agri-food systems, east and west.
1
2 Kase Kazutoshi (Professor, Institute of Social Science, University of
3 Tokyo) is working on the modern history of employment in Japan
4 and on the history of the Japanese civil engineering and construction
5111 industry.
6
John Knight (Lecturer, School of Anthropological Studies, Queen’s
7
University, Belfast) will soon publish Waiting for Wolves in Japan:
8
An Anthropological Study of People–Wildlife Relations.
9
30111 Mori Takemaro (Professor, Department of Economic Research,
1 Hitotsubashi University Graduate School) is working on the social
2 history of rural Japan in the past century and on villages and regional
3 cities in the postwar era.
4
5 Nishida Yoshiaki (formerly of the Institute of Social Science, University
6 of Tokyo; now Professor, Faculty of Economics, Kanazawa
7 University) is studying night elementary schools in Tokyo as part of
8 a larger project on forms of school attendance in modern Japan.
9
40111 Økado Masakatsu (Professor, Faculty of Economics, Yokohama
1 National University) is continuing research on women in Japanese
2111 farm families and on primary education in rural and urban Japan.
x Contributors
Kerry Smith (Associate Professor, Department of History, Brown Uni-
versity) is now studying the social and cultural histories of the Great
Kanto Earthquake of 1923.
Tsutsui Masao (Professor, Department of Economics, Shiga University)
is continuing research on the development of Japanese agriculture
and is also studying the history of local cities and the Japanese folk
craft movement.
Ann Waswo (University Lecturer in Modern Japanese History, Oxford
University) has recently published Housing in Postwar Japan: A
Social History.
Sandra Wilson (Associate Professor, School of Asian Studies, Murdoch
University) is now working on a study of Japanese nationalism in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
1111
2111 Acknowledgments
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 This volume is the product of two workshops, the first held in Tokyo in
4 March 2000 and the second held in Oxford in December of that same
5 year, and a lot of traffic in cyberspace thereafter. The editors would like
6 to express their gratitude to the University of Tokyo, its Institute of Social
7 Science and St Antony’s College, Oxford, for funding this project. We
8 would also like to thank the discussants at each workshop for their very
9 helpful comments on draft papers and the enterprise as a whole. At the
20111 Tokyo workshop the discussants were: Iwamoto Noriaki (who subse-
1 quently became a contributor to the volume), Nagae Masakasu, Nakamura
2 Masanori, Noda Kimio, Økawa Hiroshi, Ømameuda Minoru, Shimizu
3 Yøji, Tama Shinnosuke, Teruoka Sh¨zø, Usami Shigeru, Ushiyama Keiji,
4 Yamaguchi Yoshito and Yasaka Masamitsu. At the Oxford workshop the
5111 discussants were Penelope Francks and Nakashima Yasuhiro. Thanks are
6 also due to Inge Egebo, Neil Evans, Daniel Gallimore and Mizutani
7 Satoshi for their hard work in preparing draft translations of four of the
8 papers by Japanese contributors.
9 Finally we wish to acknowledge the following for permission to repro-
30111 duce copyright material:
1
2
3 Cover photograph (Communal dredging of a drainage ditch in Niigata):
4 from Nishikanbara tochi kairyøku, ed., Nishikanbara tochi kairyøshi,
5 shasshin hen (Niigata: Nishikanbara tochi kairyøku, 1981), p. 201, repro-
6 duced by permission of Majima Tatsuichi, Chairman, Nishikanbara tochi
7 kairyøku.
8
Plate 2.1: reproduced by permission of Nishida Yoshiaki and Tokyo
9
University Press.
40111
1 Plates 3.1, 3.2, 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3: from ‘Shashin ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi’
2111 kankøkai, ed., Shashin ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi (Tokyo: Fumin kyøkai,
xii Acknowledgments
1987), reproduced by permission of Kido Minato, Chairman, Fumin
kyøkai.
Plate 8.1: reproduced by permission of Togashi Eiji.
Chapter 5: ‘In search of equity: Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s,’
originally published in T. Najita and J.V. Koschmann, eds, Conflict in
Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982), reproduced by permission of Princeton University
Press.
1111
2111 1 Introduction
3
4 Ann Waswo
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 The 1990s and early 2000s have been difficult years for many farmers
4 in many parts of the developed world. Their incomes have fallen sharply,
5 and may well fall further as the subsidies designed to boost food produc-
6 tion in the aftermath of the Second World War are progressively
7 withdrawn and agriculture is increasingly exposed to unfettered market
8 forces in the national, regional and global arena. Their intensive, indus-
9 trialized production methods, celebrated in the recent past, are now the
20111 targets of criticism on both environmental and food-safety grounds. Theirs
1 is a steadily aging population, as their children vote with their feet and
2 move to urban areas to take up ‘jobs with a future.’ Young men who do
3 opt for farming find it increasingly difficult to find young women willing
4 to marry them, even in some parts of the United States (New York Times,
5111 May 6, 1999; see also Country Living, August 1999 for a response to the
6 bride shortage in rural England). There has been severe population decline
7 in some rural areas, and an influx of former city dwellers in search of
8 the rural idyll in others, who then object to the noises and odors of the
9 farming that still takes place nearby. Protesting farmers have become a
30111 familiar sight on the nightly television news. Less visible, but certainly
1 no less significant, is the rising suicide rate among farmers in at least
2 some countries. A debate about the future of farming and of food – in
3 some instances, about the rural landscape itself – appears to have begun
4 among politicians and policymakers, farmers and farmers’ organizations,
5 and consumers and consumer lobbying groups in virtually every OECD
6 country. What the outcome of those debates will be remains to be seen,
7 but it is likely that another great era of change for farmers and farming,
8 comparable to the sea changes of the early postwar era, is in the offing.
9 In all probability, the future of farmers and farming in Japan will strike
40111 most of the intended readers of this volume as an eminently clear-cut
1 case, lacking any of the ambiguities and anxieties that bedevil consider-
2111 ation of the fate of farmers and farming elsewhere. After all, to most
2 Ann Waswo
observers of agriculture and agricultural policies in the contemporary,
overwhelmingly western portion of the OECD, farming in Japan is inef-
ficiency incarnate, sustained only by a very slowly crumbling wall of
protectionism, and hence a prime candidate for extinction in favor of
more cheaply produced food imported from abroad. That urban residents
in Japan might benefit from better housing if given access to building
sites on former farmland is seen as an additional benefit, and not only
by Australia and other members of the so-called Cairns group of agri-
cultural free traders. There is also a small but increasingly vocal
constituency within Japan for the elimination of most if not all of Japanese
agriculture, consisting primarily of macro-economists at present but
possibly poised to enjoy somewhat broader support among business inter-
ests and at least some members of the Japanese public.
Moreover, to most western scholars of modern Japan – other than to
a relative handful among them who study its rural society and economy
– the countryside and its purported ethos are seen as overwhelmingly
negative factors in Japan’s development past and present. Granted, the
agricultural sector fed the nation for a crucial interval in the aftermath
of the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and made other contributions to the
consolidation of the new Meiji regime and the launching of efforts to
promote industrialization, by providing the major share of tax revenues,
significant foreign exchange earnings from the export of raw silk and tea,
and ample factory labor. But farmers themselves are widely character-
ized as a major source of problems for the modernizing ‘rest’ of the
country, especially after the turn of the twentieth century. Their tradi-
tional ethos of communal solidarity has been portrayed as the linchpin
of emperor-centered nationalism in the early 1900s, impeding the spread
of individualism and other values deemed essential to a liberal political
order. Overwhelming rural support is said to have enabled Japan’s ‘fascist’
or ‘militarist’ transformation in the 1930s and the reckless attempt to
establish Japanese hegemony in Asia during the Second World War.
Farmers’ interests as petty property owners in the aftermath of the
Occupation-led land reform, combined with their ‘innate conservatism’
and the over-representation of rural districts in elections, are frequently
cited as an obstacle to the development of a vigorous and healthy democ-
racy in postwar Japan. Given these perceived problems, releasing Japan
from the dead weight of its rural heritage might very easily be construed
as offering socio-political, as well as economic, benefits.
A common feature of most western assessments of farming and farmers
in Japan is sweeping generalization. The agricultural sector, the rural
village, the Japanese farmer feature in the discourse, such as it is. At the
very least, the contributors to this volume hope to muddy these suspi-
 Introduction 3
1111 ciously simple conceptual waters by providing evidence of the consider-
2111 able diversity within rural Japan at any given time, as well as evidence
3 of fairly constant processes of adaptation and change at the local level,
4 and not only in response to directives from government officials or other
5111 elites. Our focus is not on the economics of Japanese agriculture past or
6 present, although prevailing economic realities will figure in most of the
7 papers. Nor will state policy receive more than passing attention. Rather,
8 we seek to emphasize the actions and attitudes of farmers themselves as
9 they have confronted and coped with new opportunities and new chal-
1011 lenges during the twentieth century. In contrast to the modernist paradigm,
1 which posits a sharp dichotomy between the ‘old’/rural/agrarian and the
2 ‘new’/urban/industrial and which generally portrays the old as a drag
3111 on development, we seek to demonstrate that Japanese farmers played an
4 active and largely positive role in Japan’s modern trajectory. Far from
5 being ‘innately’ conservative, they have proven themselves consistently
6 innovative, and their support for the conservative Liberal–Democratic
7 Party (LDP) in the postwar era was by no means a foregone conclusion.
8 The Japan Socialist Party (JSP) had been very active in the countryside
9 in the first few years after Japan’s surrender in 1945, after all, and might
20111 well have made further headway among rural voters had its significant
1 left-wing not decided after poor results in the election of 1949 that it
2 should concentrate on being the party of the industrial proletariat, rather
3 than a more broadly based party of the lower and lower middle classes
4 as a whole. Conservative politicians then proved willing and able to fill
5111 the void the JSP’s retreat from the countryside created.
6 We focus in this volume on the twentieth century in part because a
7 reasonably accurate portrayal of rural Japan in the late nineteenth century
8 has found its way into textbooks of Japanese history and other western
9 scholarship dealing at least in part with agriculture’s role in Japan’s devel-
30111 opment at that time. A further, and more salient, reason is that it was
1 from the turn of the twentieth century that Japan’s industrial transfor-
2 mation began in earnest, posing for Japan as for other countries at other
3 times the challenge of defining a place for farming and farmers within a
4 dramatically changing economic order. It is in this respect that Japan’s
5 experience may prove most relevant in comparative perspective, thus
6 contributing to a better understanding of an important phase in the long
7 history of agriculture itself.
8 In Chapter 2 Nishida Yoshiaki presents an overview of the century,
9 based primarily on the diary of Nishiyama Køichi, a farmer in Niigata
40111 prefecture. In Chapter 3 Økado Masakatsu introduces the neglected topic
1 of rural women during the same period. In Chapters 4 and 5 Tsutsui
2111 Masao and myself discuss developments in rural Japan in the early 1900s
4 Ann Waswo
and 1920s, respectively, each in its own way a time of increasing empow-
erment for ‘ordinary’ farmers, whether owner-cultivators or tenant
farmers, within a stratified rural social order. Three chapters on the
profoundly disruptive consequences of the Great Depression of the 1930s
follow. In the first of these Kerry Smith explores the response of the
overwhelming majority of Japanese farmers to the depression: working
together for rural revitalization in Japan. Sandra Wilson and Mori
Takemaro then examine efforts to promote rural emigration to Manchuria,
a Japanese puppet state after the Manchurian Incident of 1931, and the
decidedly lukewarm responses of Japanese farmers to those efforts. The
next four chapters deal with the postwar era. In Chapter 9 Raymond
Jussaume Jr discusses the evolution of part-time farming, or the pluriac-
tivity of farmers, from its prewar origins to the mid-1990s. Iwamoto
Noriaki examines farmers’ changing attitudes toward land and land use
in the context of rapid economic growth and urban land price escalation
in Chapter 10, and Kase Kazutoshi examines the impact of the same
external developments on farmers’ enthusiasm for farmland and agricul-
tural improvements in Chapter 11. In Chapter 12 John Knight considers
the phenomenon of rural resettlement in a depopulated rural region and
the implications of such resettlement for an agrarian future in Japan. In
a concluding chapter the editors discuss some of the main themes that
emerge from the preceding chapters and assess the prospects for farmers
and farming in Japan at the outset of the twenty-first century.
Although rural Japan is the setting in the pages that follow, many of
the issues dealt with will come as no surprise to observers of farming
and farmers in the twentieth-century West. That said, however, there are
certain distinctive features of the Japanese case that need to be borne in
mind. Chief among these are, first, the relatively high proportion of farm
households within the total population and total labor force of Japan, at
least until fairly recently. Between 1868 and 1940, the number of farm
households remained relatively stable at some 5.5 million, each with an
average of about five household members, within a population that
grew from some 35 million to 72 million persons. By and large, the non-
agricultural economy in this period only provided new employment
opportunities for the surplus (non-inheriting) younger sons and daughters
of farm households, and no net decrease in the number of households
engaged in farming occurred. That would not begin to take place until
the early 1960s and the onset of Japan’s so-called ‘economic miracle’ of
sustained high rates of growth and structural change, and it would
gather speed both as the non-agricultural economy soared in the years
ahead and as the early postwar generation of farmers/heads of farming
households progressively aged. There had been some 5.7 million farm
 Introduction 5
1111 households in 1965. By 1985 the number had fallen to 4.4 million, and
2111 it would fall to 3.4 million in 1995. During those same years the Japanese
3 population had grown from 98 to 125 million, and the total labor force
4 had increased from 48 to 64 million. Roughly 70 percent of the total
5111 labor force at the turn of the century, and still 45 percent in 1950, farmers
6 would constitute only about 10 percent in 1980 and about 5 percent
7 in 1995.
8 Second, we must note the persistence of family farming on relatively
9 small holdings throughout the century. The average holding of farm house-
1011 holds before the Second World War was about one chø (.992 hectares
1 or 2.45 acres) in size, and it remained one chø after the postwar land
2 reform, which virtually eliminated farm tenancy but did not – indeed
3111 could not – address the problem of land scarcity in a mountainous and
4 densely populated country. There were, of course, significant regional
5 and local variations in the scale of holdings which average figures obscure,
6 but, more importantly, both before and after the war there was signifi-
7 cant potential for productivity increases even on such small holdings
8 and, as we shall see, much of that potential was realized. What might
9 well appear to be market gardening by the standards of extensive western
20111 agriculture could prove to be reasonably profitable in Japan, and certainly
1 adequate to supporting a respectable standard of living, provided the culti-
2 vator either owned the land concerned or paid only modest rents.
3 The third feature concerns the centrality of one crop, rice, in agricul-
4 tural production. In Japan, as elsewhere in Asia, rice has long been grown
5111 in flooded paddies, and located as Japan is on the fringes of the monsoon
6 zone, rainfall alone could not be counted on to provide the necessary
7 water as and when needed. A considerable infrastructure of irrigation and
8 drainage facilities was required to service the paddies in a given locality.
9 As a result, no one farmer could own or control all of the essential means
30111 of production himself, and needed the community in order to survive as
1 a rice producer. Herein lay the basis for communal solidarity and coop-
2 eration in the rural settlements of Japan. Other crops were grown, to be
3 sure, on drained rice paddies in the winter, where climate allowed (gener-
4 ally in the southwestern half of the archipelago), and on upland or dry
5 fields (hatake) beyond the reach of existing technology for paddy rice or
6 – more recently – on former rice paddies that have been converted to the
7 raising of ‘upland’ or dry field crops. Throughout the twentieth century,
8 however, the area devoted to rice production generally has exceeded the
9 area planted to all other crops combined. Moreover, the varieties of rice
40111 grown were of a specific type, shorter-grain japonica rice, that would
1 germinate at the lower temperatures prevailing in Japan than was the case
2111 with the longer-grain indica type of rice grown in monsoon Asia, and
6 Ann Waswo
that differed in luster, texture and taste from indica rice (Francks 1983:
28; Ohnuki-Tierney 1993: 13). So long as domestic demand for that rice
continued to increase, Japanese rice farmers prospered. When demand
started to fall in the mid-1960s, a ‘rice mountain’ of surplus production
began to accumulate, which no other major rice-consuming country
wanted in any meaningful quantity, even if that rice had been sold at a
discount well below the price the Japanese government was then paying
its domestic rice producers.
Given the near equivalence between chø and hectares, the two measure-
ments of area will be used interchangeably in the chapters that follow.
As hatake fields are no longer confined to upland areas, they will be
described as dry fields. The names of all Japanese persons cited in the
text or as authors will be given in the standard Japanese order: surname
followed by personal name.

References
Country Living. 1999. ‘Lonely Hearts Campaign: The Farmer Wants a Wife,’
August, pp. 54–6.
Francks, Penelope. 1983. Technology and Agricultural Development in Pre-war
Japan. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
New York Times. 1999. ‘Scrambling to Find Cupid in a Haystack,’ May 6.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko. 1993. Rice as Self: Japanese Identities through Time.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1111
2111 2 Dimensions of change in
3 twentieth-century rural Japan
4
5111
6 Nishida Yoshiaki
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
Introduction
5 In this chapter I will discuss the many changes that occurred in Japanese
6 villages and in the lives and livelihoods of Japanese farmers during the
7 twentieth century, basing my assessment primarily on a diary kept by a
8 farmer in the Nishi-Kanbara district of Niigata Prefecture. The diary’s
9 writer, Nishiyama Køichi, was born in August 1908 and died in December
20111 1995 at the age of 87. His entries start in October 1925 when he was 17
1 and continue on an almost daily basis until the early 1990s, a span of
2 some 65 years. At the beginning of this period, his family were pure
3 tenant farmers, cultivating slightly more than two chø (one chø = 2.45
4 acres) of rented land in the hamlet of Koshin in the village of Sakaiwa.
5111 The hamlet was located between the Shinano and Nishikawa rivers, only
6 about two miles from Niigata City on the Japan Sea, and the five tracts
7 of marshland within its borders were held as common land to which all
8 farmers residing in the hamlet had rights of access.
9 During Køichi’s tenure as head of the family, the Nishiyamas made
30111 considerable economic strides forward, first acquiring title to the land
1 they cultivated not long before the end of the Second World War and
2 then thriving as owner-cultivating farmers for over two decades, even
3 becoming ‘cultivating landlords’ for a brief period in the early 1970s.
4 Stock market speculation by Køichi’s son and heir thereafter, using the
5 dramatically enhanced value of their land as collateral, proved the family’s
6 undoing, however, and by the late 1980s they owned no land but that on
7 which their family home stood and were no longer involved in farming.
8 Entries in the diary record the main daily activities of Køichi and other
9 members of his family and all their income and expenditure, giving us
40111 a clear record year by year of the labor they devoted to farming and to
1 by-employments and hence of changes in their household economy.
2111 Køichi was also concerned with the life of his village and hamlet,
8 Nishida Yoshiaki
recording the major events and campaigns that took place in his lifetime.
These entries make it possible to trace developments within the local
community and to see how solidarity and mutual cooperation among resi-
dents were from time to time affected by tension and conflict. Although
it is very definitely micro-data, this diary provides us with rare insight
into the realities of rural life and is a valuable source for the study of
farmers and villages during the twentieth century. Entries up until 1975
have been published in Nishida and Kubo 1991 and 1998.
Since the diary begins in 1925, however, it cannot tell us anything of
the first quarter of the twentieth century. For that period, I will draw on
the Zenji Nisshi (Diary of Zenji), kept by an owner-tenant farmer in
Yamagata Prefecture between 1893 and 1934 (reprinted, with helpful
commentaries, by Toyohara Kenky¨kai 1977), and also on the novel
Tsuchi (The Soil) by Nagatsuka Takashi (English translation by Waswo
1989), which provides a very realistic portrait of rural life in the early
1900s.

The worlds of Zenji and Tsuchi (1900–25)

Zenji was born in 1878 in the village of Toyohara in the district of Akumi
in northeastern Yamagata Prefecture, the second son of an owner-tenant
farmer cultivating some 14 to 15 tan (one tan = .245 acre) of land. He
started his diary in 1893 when he was 15 and continued it until 1934.
Until 1896 he worked on his natal family’s holding and did occasional
labor for a nearby large landowner. In 1898 he was taken on as a hired
employee by the Gotø family, who cultivated eight tan of land that they
owned and another nine tan that they rented, and who had no sons to
help with the work. In 1904 he married the Gotø’s second daughter (the
eldest having died) and so was adopted as their family heir.
What then was the household economy and the daily life of the Gotø
family and Zenji like during the early 1900s? It goes without saying that
their core business was as farmers cultivating rice, but they also carried
out a wide variety of subsidiary activities, such as rice brokerage (i.e.
purchasing rice wholesale for later sale at a profit, known locally as
kedashi), seasonal work transporting rice to dealers in the coastal city of
Sakata (known as dachinmai, ‘rice carriage’), polishing rice, selling sake
and brokering the ropes that local farmers made, and it is evident that it
was the profits from these subsidiary activities that made it possible for
them to acquire more land. By around 1910, the Gotø had risen consid-
erably in their world, even though they remained owner-tenant farmers,
because they had managed to expand the acreage they owned to 12 tan,
bringing their total holding – including the nine tan still rented – to 21
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 9
1111 tan (2.1 chø). Such an advance into the upper ranks of Japanese farmers
2111 was highly unusual at the time, especially in the Tohoku region, where
3 a widening disparity between the economic status of landlords on the one
4 hand and of tenant farmers on the other had been the norm. Yet it was
5111 an advance made at the cost of ‘ceaseless labor’ by people working for
6 the Gotø, none more so than Zenji (Usami 1977a: 16). The Gotø were
7 known as particularly ‘strict’ employers, such that it was said that ‘if you
8 had survived working for the Gotø you could survive working anywhere’
9 (Usami 1977b: 142). Their draconian exploitation of all available labor
1011 as a means of expanding their operations also made them rather unusual.
1 Even so, the strongest impression one gets from Zenji’s diary entries
2 at this time is not how much work he had to do, but how relentlessly
3111 repetitious that work was year after year. Of course, it could be argued
4 that such relentless repetition of tasks is an enduring feature of paddy
5 rice farming in Japan, rather than a distinctive characteristic of the early
6 1900s. Indeed, the author of another of the commentaries on the diary
7 has calculated that there was essentially no difference in the time Zenji
8 devoted to various tasks when he was in his twenties, at the turn of the
9 century, and when he was in his fifties, in the 1930s (Kawaguchi 1977:
20111 36). But I think the diary does illustrate the general stasis that prevailed
1 in rural Japan at this time, which would not be disrupted until after the
2 First World War. There was an established pattern in place, in which
3 farming and its demands took precedence over everything else. Although
4 the Gotø were one of only two families in Toyohara to engage in rice
5111 brokering, an activity that along with rice carriage took Zenji to Sakata
6 far more frequently than was usual for local farmers, there is no evidence
7 that commercial involvement of that sort changed their – or his – outlook
8 or approach to securing the household’s future in any significant way.
9 On the contrary, the brokering was also routinized, continuing to pretty
30111 much the same extent and in the same manner in the early 1900s as had
1 been the case a generation or so earlier, and slotted in at the very end of
2 the established agricultural calendar: deep-digging the paddy fields with
3 a horse-drawn plow → transplanting the rice seedlings → weeding →
4 harvesting → winnowing → manufacture of bags and rope from rice
5 straw. It was not something that was going to disrupt village life in any
6 way. Moreover, it appears from the diary that from the time of Zenji’s
7 adoption as Gotø heir in 1904 until the end of the Meiji era in 1912 there
8 were no incidents of tension, much less conflict, among village residents.
9 Indeed, the only unusual entries Zenji made in his diary concerned essen-
40111 tially private matters, such as a surprisingly long 16-day stay at a hot
1 springs spa in 1910 and the running away of his wife with a young male
2111 employee for a month that same year. Rural life in Toyohara during the
10 Nishida Yoshiaki
early years of the twentieth century was decisively centered on the
seasonal agricultural cycle, and although the village was not far from
Sakata, with which its commercial relations were gradually deepening,
the diary gives no real indication of the village having experienced
economic, political or social development of any sort during that time.
Nagatsuka Takashi’s novel Tsuchi (The Soil) is set in a village on the
west bank of the Kinu river in Ibaraki Prefecture and revolves around
the life of a desperately poor tenant farmer. The novel has been praised
as ‘a seminal work in the rural literature of our country’ (Usui 1956:
326), and since it was first published as a book in 1912 more than 200
separate studies of it have appeared in print (Murakami 1997: 11). There
can thus be no doubting its high reputation as a work of literature, but
it is also essential to note that the author was committed to realism and
intimately familiar with the community about which he wrote, thus
providing readers with vivid details about the lives of those at the lower
reaches of rural society in the early twentieth century and their relations
with other residents. While still a graduate student, Ann Waswo was told
by the late Professor Furushima Toshio that if she wanted to know what
rural life was actually like in the Meiji era she should read Tsuchi, and
she eventually decided to translate the whole of it into English because,
as she put it, ‘[A]lthough Tsuchi was undeniably a novel it was simul-
taneously an informal ethnography of a rural community and its
inhabitants in the early 1900s and, as such, a valuable historical docu-
ment’ (Waswo 1989: vi). Indeed, as she also observed, ‘[A]s a place
where labor-intensive, small-scale family farming prevailed, the commu-
nity depicted in the novel was fairly typical of rural Japan in the early
1900s’ (Waswo 1989: xi).
I am inclined to agree with those observations for the following four
reasons. First, the novel depicts the impoverished lives of tenant farmers
and their dependence on the benevolence of their landlords. After Kanji’s
wife Oshina died, he found himself down to a single sack of rice with
which to feed his children, and so:

he went and appealed to his landlord to let him borrow back half of
the rice he owed until the following fall. The landlord, the former
head of EastNeighbor’s house, consented.
(Waswo 1989: 29; Nagatsuka 1956: 50)

This was a time when tenant farmers could not survive hard times of one
sort or another unless their landlords benevolently reduced or deferred
rent payments, a fact that is supported by the records kept by the
Nishiyama family in Niigata Prefecture, which report that in almost every
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 11
1111 year between 1902 and 1914 one or another of their landlords benevo-
2111 lently consented to reduce rents. Second, the novel sheds light on the
3 circumstances that constrained poor tenant farmers to make themselves
4 available for paid work:
5111
6 During the growing season itself they had to abandon their own fields
7 to do day labor for others to earn money for that day’s food. . . . Even
8 when their own crops most needed attention they might not be
9 able to provide it for days at a time. Nor could they do much about
1011 fertilizer.
1 (Waswo 1989: 47; Nagatsuka 1956: 74–5)
2
3111 In other words, they were caught up in a vicious circle: because they
4 were poor they had no choice but to do day labor; because they did day
5 labor they were unable to tend their own crops as and when necessary;
6 and as a result, their crops would produce poor yields, leaving them at
7 least as dependent on day labor for income as before. More affluent
8 farmers were not caught up in this vicious circle, and not surprisingly
9 their yields were thus more abundant. My third point is related to the
20111 first and second: that many of the opportunities for day labor were
1 provided by landlords themselves, for example in projects to reclaim land
2 for farming within the woodlands that they owned (Waswo 1989: 94;
3 Nagatsuka 1956: 142). Finally, there is the sense that one is left with
4 after reading the novel that poor farmers faced very bleak prospects indeed
5111 at this time of ever improving their farming operations or their liveli-
6 hoods. Granted, there were opportunities for day labor in the village and
7 off-season work at more distant construction projects. Like Kanji, they
8 just might manage finally to have a little cash to hand and to feel that
9 after years of struggle life was getting better at last. But as if to sweep
30111 this more optimistic interpretation aside, the novel ends with a disastrous
1 fire that spreads from Kanji’s house to his landlord’s nearby and leaves
2 everything in ashes in its wake. What Tsuchi conveys is an image of a
3 poor farmer entrapped in his poverty, no matter how hard he has worked,
4 and in that sense it captures the situation confronting all poor farmers in
5 the period before the First World War.
6 In the rural villages of Japan early in the twentieth century, cases like
7 that of Zenji, whose position as a farmer improved to a notable degree,
8 were exceptional. The majority of tenant farmers and owner-tenant
9 farmers remained dependent (as in Tsuchi) on the benevolence of their
40111 landlords and were forced to make up their threadbare existence by day
1 labor and off-season employment elsewhere. Moreover, as Zenji’s diary
2111 entries make clear, the lives of farmers were tied to the agricultural cycle,
12 Nishida Yoshiaki
unaffected by significant economic, social or political change. Stasis pre-
vailed, as indeed appeared to be the case in the village portrayed in Tsuchi,
especially among its poorest residents. As Tsutsui argues later in this
volume, changes were under way in this period owing to the steadily
growing commercialization of the countryside, but not until after the First
World War would those changes become manifest.

Zenji and farming during the First World War

The First World War gave rise to unprecedented economic growth in
Japan. In a single stroke she turned from being a net importer to a net
exporter and from a debtor nation to a creditor nation, giving rise to
considerable economic change throughout the nation, including the coun-
tryside.
Toyohara and the lives of its inhabitants (of whom Zenji was in this
sense no exception) experienced significant changes. The first of these,
completed just before the war began, was a large-scale project of land
adjustment (køchi seiri), which transformed some 7,500 chø of fields in
the Akumi district into uniformly sized parcels of one tan each and enabled
local landowners to exchange parcels with others so that they ended up
with less scattered holdings than in the past. That in itself made farming
operations considerably easier and more efficient than previously and
seems to have encouraged other improvements as well, most notably in
the application of fertilizer. It was from this time that such commercial
fertilizers as soybean cakes began to be used in earnest, leading to dramatic
increases in the productivity of land. That entries such as those Zenji
recorded in his diary in April 1916 to the effect that he had ‘bought ten
soybean cakes and one bag of bone meal’ and ‘bought twenty soybean
cakes’ became more frequent thereafter is suggestive of this trend. It
should be noted, too, that this land adjustment project, like most others
carried out in Japan at the time, also eliminated the ‘extra land’ (nobi)
that tenant farmers had been able to cultivate in the past, when the area
of irregularly shaped fields had been estimated rather than accurately
determined as now was possible, but no corresponding reduction in the
rents they were charged was effected. This would prove to be a cause of
tenancy disputes in the Akumi district, and elsewhere in Japan, in the
future (Isobe 1977: 208–12).
Second, Zenji’s involvement in rice brokerage expanded rapidly during
the war years. In 1913 he had bought only 235 hyø of rice (one hyø =
60 kg), whereas in 1916 he bought 603 hyø and in 1917, 501 hyø (Takeda
1977: 170–1). His profit amounted to ¥130 in 1916 and ¥165 in 1917,
or almost enough in total to purchase a tan of arable land, then costing
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 13
1111 350 to 400 yen (Takeda 1977: 184–5). In fact, there does appear to have
2111 been a close connection between the expansion in the rice brokering busi-
3 ness and the acquisition of additional land. In 1915 the Gotø purchased
4 12 tsubo (.04 tan, or 39.7 sq. m.) of dry field, in 1916 they purchased
5111 4.7 chø of woodland, and in 1917 they purchased 149 tsubo (almost
6 half a tan, or 493.2 sq. m.) of rice paddy and 29 tsubo (.097 tan, or 96
7 sq. m.) of housing land (Isobe 1977: 198–9).
8 Third, and very significantly, Zenji’s rice brokering business declined
9 markedly in 1918 and 1919, even though rice prices soared in those years,
1011 and both that business and his rice carriage business came to an end in
1 1920. This was because the Uetsu railway line along the Japan Sea coast
2 had been extended to the north of Sakata in 1919 and a branch of the
3111 Sankyo rice warehouse built at Motodate station, not far from Toyohara.
4 Local farmers no longer had any need for the services he had been
5 providing, as they could now take their rice to the nearby warehouse and
6 sell it themselves (Takeda 1977: 187). Zenji’s most profitable business
7 activities had been rendered useless by the expansion of the railway
8 network, but thanks in large measure to those activities the Gotø family
9 had acquired more land and could now make a fairly comfortable living
20111 as full-time farmers.
1 As shown in Table 2.1, rice yields per tan increased considerably
2 during the years of the First World War, mostly because of the greater
3 use of commercial fertilizers. With the expansion of the railway network
4 during the same period and on into the early 1920s, the commodification
5111 of rice also increased dramatically. The average annual volume of rice
6 traded nationwide between 1911 and 1914, for example, had amounted
7 to 89.53 million koku (one koku = 150 kg), or only about 1.78 times the
8 average annual output of 50.25 million koku. In contrast, between 1915
9 and 1924 the average annual volume traded rose to 309.65 million koku,
30111
1
2 Table 2.1 Changes in rice yields, 1910–21
3 Years Planted area Total yield Yield per tan
4 (in million chø) (in million koku) (in koku)
5
1910–12 2.97 49.5 1.67
6
1913–15 3.03 54.3 1.79
7 1916–18 3.08 55.8 1.82
8 1919–21 3.12 59.7 1.91
9
Source: Kayø Nobufumi, Kaitei Nihon nøgyø kiso tøkei (1977), pp. 194–5.
40111
Notes:
1 Yields shown are averages for each 3-year period.
2111 1 tan = 0.1 chø; 1 koku = 150 kg.
14 Nishida Yoshiaki
or 5.38 times the average annual output of 57.59 million koku (Niigata-
ken keizai nøgyø kumiai rengøkai 1957: 342). It was as a consequence
of these and other developments during the war years that the lives and
livelihoods of Japanese farmers began to change in important ways.

The era of tenancy disputes and challenges to landlord

ascendancy
The growth in agricultural productivity during the First World War served
to transform Japanese farmers, including many tenant farmers, into small-
scale commodity producers. As shown in Table 2.2, even the family of
Nishiyama Køichi, who rented all of the land they cultivated, sold a
steadily increasing volume of rice during the 1920s, the (estimated)
amount rising from 11.6 koku (29 hyø) in 1921 to 32.7 koku (82 hyø) in
1929. Like other tenant farmers, they also had to pay rents in kind to
their landlords, and the more involved they became in commodity produc-
tion, the more keenly aware they became of the real value of the rice
they were handing over. The stage was set for tenant demands for rent
reduction.
The tenant farmers of Koshin hamlet joined the Northern Japan
Farmers’ Union in 1922, and in 1923, even though yields were down
only slightly on those of the previous year, they demanded a 32 percent
rent reduction and persuaded all local landlords to agree to it. Then in
December of 1925 Miyake Shøichi and Inamura Ry¨ichi, well-known
leaders of the farmers’ movement in Niigata Prefecture, were invited to
address a gathering of tenant farmers at the Man’eiji Temple in Koshin.
As Nishiyama Køichi wrote in the diary he had begun just a few months
earlier: ‘The meeting went off very well with a large attendance from all
parts of the hamlet and an ostentatious presence by the Uchino police.’
It was decided to establish the Koshin branch of the Japan Farmers’ Union
and to press for 30 percent rent reductions between 1925 and 1927. These
efforts, too, met with considerable success. Once organized, and bene-
fiting from the support of a nationwide farmers’ union, the tenant farmers
of Koshin were able to wrest considerably more favorable terms from
their landlords.
They were not alone in organizing and seeking lower rents. As shown
in Table 2.3, both the number of tenant unions and the number of tenancy
disputes escalated during the 1920s, with most disputes in that decade
involving demands for rent reductions. Most such disputes resulted in
at least a degree of success for tenant farmers. For example, the data
published annually by the government in Kosaku Nenpø (The Annual
Report on Tenancy) indicate that in 1926 tenants pressed for rent
Table 2.2 Rice farming operations by the Nishiyama family, 1911 and 1921–44

Year Planted Total yield Yield Tenant rents Rice sold Rice % rent
area (in koku) per tan paid (in koku) (in koku) retained reduction
(in tan) a b c a – (b+c) secured
1911 15.7 22.66 1.443 40.2
1921 17.5 33.00 1.886 10.6 (32.1) (11.6) 0
1922 17.5 34.50 1.971 10.6 (30.7) (13.1) 0
1923 17.6 33.80 1.920 7.2 (21.3) (15.8) 32.0
1924 14.4 33.75 2.344 10.6 (31.4) (12.4) 0
1925 17.0 37.74 2.220 7.4 (19.6) (19.5) 30.0
1926 17.0 33.68 1.981 5.3 (15.7) (17.6) 50.0
1927 17.3 39.21 2.266 7.4 (18.9) (21.0) 30.0
1928 21.6 48.50 2.245 9.7 (20.0) (28.0) 41.0
1929 21.6 53.15 2.461 9.7 (18.3) (32.7) 41.0
1930 22.4 68.80 3.071 12.3 (17.9) (45.7) 12.5
1931 20.0
1932 17.1 47.80 2.795 10.0
1933 61.65 9.8 (15.9) 28.4 (23.5) 7.0
1934 22.5 49.52 2.201 41.6 29.0
1935 22.5 35.2 0
1936 22.5 65.80 2.924 13.4 (20.4) 35.2 (17.2) 0
1937 22.5 63.98 2.843 10.7 (16.7) 36.8 (16.5) 0
1938 24.1 67.65 2.807 11.7 (17.3) 38.8 (17.2) 0
1939 24.1 72.55 3.010 12.0 (16.5) 46.0 (14.6) 0
1940 24.3 63.20 2.061 11.3 (17.9) 34.8 (17.1) 0
1941 23.7 66.80 2,819 46.4 40.0
1942 20.6 50.02 2.428 31.6 0
1943 24.5 62.50 2.551 0
1944 22.3 61.50 2.758 0
Source: Calculated from tables 48, 49 and 75 of the explanatory chapter in Nishida Yoshiaki and Kubo Yasuo, Nishiyama Køichi nikki (Tokyo: Tøkyø
daigaku shuppankai, 1991).
Notes
1 Rice sales from 1921 to 1930, in parentheses, are estimated, using the known figure of 27 bales (10.8 koku) of rice consumed by the family in
1930. Total yield less rent paid and rice consumed = estimated rice sold.
2 The figures in parentheses after ‘tenant rents paid’ indicate the percentage of the total yield paid as rent.
3 The figures in parentheses for ‘rice retained’ indicate the rice remaining from the harvest after rent payments and recorded rice sales.
16 Nishida Yoshiaki

Plate 2.1 Nishiyama Køichi (second from the left), aged 18. Reproduced from
Nishida Yoshiaki and Kubo Yasuo, eds, Nishiyama Køichi Nikki,
1925–50 nen (Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai, 1991).

reductions averaging 34.9 percent and secured reductions averaging 23.6

percent; in 1928, they pressed for reductions averaging 34 percent and
secured reductions averaging 21.7 percent. That disputes were concentrated
at this time in western Japan was a reflection of the earlier increases in
agricultural output there and, hence, the earlier involvement of local tenant
farmers in small-scale commodity production. It is worth noting, however,
that, wherever such commodity production occurred, interest in rent reduc-
tion was likely to occur, too. As Waswo argues later in this volume, tenant
farmers had relied on the benevolence of their landlords in the past, going
to them individually to request rent reductions whenever yields were poor,
but now they joined together and presented most if not all local landlords
with a uniform set of demands. There is evidence of this shift in attitude
in Zenji’s diary, which records in December 1924 that ‘Yozø has gone to
[one of his landlords] to request a rent reduction’ and in March 1925 that
‘I went to a meeting to see about getting rents reduced.’
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 17
1111 Table 2.3 Tenant unions and tenancy disputes, 1920–37
2111
Year Number Number Principal tenant Number of
3 of tenant of tenancy demands participants
4 unions disputes Related to Related to Landlords Tenants
5111 rents tenancy
6 rights
7
8 1920 408 350 – 5,236 34,605
(85.7) (12.8) (84.8)
9 1921 681 1,680 1,409 – 33,985 145,898
1011 (83.8) (20.2) (86.8)
1 1922 1,114 1,578 1,527 – 29,077 125,750
2 (96.7) (18.4) (79.7)
1923 1,530 1,917 1,872 15 31,712 134,503
3111
(97.6) (0.7) (16.5) (70.2)
4 1924 2,337 1,532 1,433 24 27,223 110,920
5 (93.5) (1.5) (17.8) (72.4)
6 1925 3,496 2,206 1,957 162 33,001 134,646
7 (88.7) (7.3) (15.0) (61.0)
1926 3,926 2,751 2,324 313 39,705 151,061
8 (84.4) (11.3) (14.4) (54.9)
9 1927 4,582 2,052 1,508 417 24,136 91,336
20111 (73.5) (20.3) (11.8) (44.5)
1 1928 4,353 1,866 1,238 464 19,474 75,136
2 (66.3) (24.8) (10.4) (40.3)
1929 4,156 2,434 1,595 703 23,505 81,998
3 (65.5) (28.8) (9.7) (33.7)
4 1930 4,208 2,478 1,357 996 14,159 58,565
5111 (54.7) (40.1) (5.7) (23.6)
6 1931 4,414 3,419 1,918 1,315 23,768 81,135
7 (56.0) (38.4) (7.0) (23.7)
1932 4,650 3,414 1,464 1,468 16,706 61,499
8 (42.8) (42.9) (4.9) (18.0)
9 1933 4,810 4,000 1,285 2,305 14,312 48,073
30111 (32.1) (57.6) (3.6) (12.0)
1 1934 4,390 5,828 2,479 2,668 34,035 121,031
2 (42.5) (45.7) (5.8) (20.8)
1935 4,011 6,824 2,877 3,055 28,574 113,164
3 (42.1) (44.7) (4.2) (16.6)
4 1936 3,915 6,804 2,117 3,674 23,293 77,187
5 (31.1) (53.9) (3.4) (11.3)
6 1937 3,879 6,170 1,795 3,509 20,236 63,246
(29.0) (56.8) (3.3) (10.3)
7
8 Sources: Calculated from annual editions of Kosaku chøtei nenpø and Kosaku nenpø.
9 Notes
40111 1 The figures in parentheses for tenant demands show the percentage of all disputes in a
given year involving that demand. (Less frequently made demands are omitted here.)
1 2 The figures in parentheses for participants show the average number involved in each
2111 dispute.
18 Nishida Yoshiaki
Nor was taking a united stance toward rent reductions the only change
in the behavior of tenant farmers at this time. They also began challeng-
ing the ascendancy of landlords in village politics and agricultural affairs.
In the elections for town and village assemblies held in 1925 under de
facto universal manhood suffrage, fully 9,061 (or 21.2 percent) of the
42,738 successful candidates were tenant farmers, almost 2.5 times as
many as had been elected under a restricted franchise in the last elections
held in 1921. In 761 town and village assemblies, tenant farmers now con-
stituted more than one-third of members, and in 340 assemblies they now
constituted the majority, a fivefold increase over the last elections (Nøchi
seido shiryø sh¨sei hensan iinkai 1969: 64). In addition, there was a notable
increase in the number of tenant farmers joining village agricultural asso-
ciations, agricultural cooperatives and fire brigades. Not surprisingly, the
attention of tenant and owner-tenant farmers also turned to gaining a voice
in hamlet decision-making, which had until then been controlled by the
wealthiest residents. In Koshin hamlet, my focus here, what eventuated in
1929 were demands for fairly radical reform: As Køichi noted in his diary
in February of that year, ‘From now on, the headman of each ward [within
the hamlet] should receive 11 koku of rice per year in compensation for
services rendered,’ and ‘The council of prominent residents should be
replaced with a representative assembly, with 5 members elected from the
lower ward and 3 each elected by middle and upper wards.’ The first of
these demands meant that the post of headman would no longer be con-
fined to men of means, who could afford the time and expenditure the post
demanded, and the second meant that all households, not just the most
affluent among them, would have a voice in deciding hamlet affairs. The
stipulation that the lower ward, which contained the most households and
in which many tenant farmers lived, would elect five representatives to the
hamlet assembly was intended to insure that the interests of tenant farm-
ers would get a fair hearing. Both demands were accepted, and Køichi’s
father Komakichi was soon elected for the first time as one of the nøji
gakari (agricultural officials) who were responsible for all farming matters
in the hamlet.
As is well known, the Peace Preservation Law was passed at the same
time as the Universal Manhood Suffrage Law of 1925, and it became no
easy matter for those leading the farmers’ movement and other social
reform movements to pursue their objectives. That said, however, it should
be noted that, as a result of tenancy disputes and other initiatives, a degree
of rural democratization was achieved during the 1920s, some of it even
penetrating to the hamlet level. The actual cultivators of the land gained
a greater voice in local affairs and, as we shall see, in Koshin that voice
would survive the harsh years ahead.
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 19
1111 Rural life during the Showa depression
2111
Rice prices had been declining since 1926, but they dropped dramatically
3
in October 1930, plunging rural Japan into a deep depression. In order
4
5111 to weather the crisis and generate a little cash, the Nishiyamas began first
6 to manufacture, sell and repair rice-hulling devices, then to sell threshing
7 apparatus, next to produce mechanically made rope for sale, and finally
8 to make and sell powdered soap, as well as selling green tea. Yet capital
9 was needed to start each of these businesses, and as the depression left
1011 them without cash to hand they ended up borrowing all the money
1 required. Køichi had gone ‘to the Hachisuke house to borrow funds for
2 the threshing apparatus’ that he had designed himself and then had ‘mort-
3111 gaged some industrial bonds to borrow 30 yen’ (both entries, December
4 1930). But none of these ventures made a go of it in the harsh economic
5 climate of the time, and their debts swiftly mounted. In January 1932,
6 seeing no other escape from their predicament, Køichi wrote in his diary:
7 ‘Having discussed matters with my father until midnight, we eventually
8 decided to sell everything we own to pay off our debts.’ After consulta-
9 tion with their relatives, however, Køichi was relieved to record in
20111 February that: ‘We had been prepared to settle our debts now, but it
1 seems we have another year before having to do so.’
2 The loans taken out by the Nishiyama family certainly were consid-
3 erable. As of 1932, the sum they owed amounted to ¥5,752, which was
4 more than 11 times the average ¥514 of debt per tenant farmer house-
5111 hold reported in the Economic Survey of Farm Households for that year
6 (Nørinshø 1974: 20–5). Their determined efforts to generate income from
7 first one new activity and then another, using borrowed capital, had
8 without exception failed. An extreme case they obviously were, but it
9 should be stressed that all farmers suffered from mounting debt during
30111 the depression years. The average ¥514 indebtedness of tenant farmers
1 cited above was, after all, considerably greater than their average income
2 of ¥385 that same year. It was the rapid spread of debt among farmers
3 throughout the country in the initial years of the depression that prompted
4 the government to pass the Farm Village Debt Arrangement Union Law
5 in March 1933, although most scholars would agree the law did little to
6 resolve the problems that Japanese farmers faced.
7 One noteworthy trend observable in rural Japan during the depression
8 era was a decline in tenant militancy. In Koshin, instead of demanding
9 substantial rent reductions every year as in the mid- to late 1920s, union
40111 members now stood by while others decided what sort of reduction might
1 be given in view of current crop conditions. As Køichi recorded in
2111 September 1930, ‘We got our landlords to come and see how our rice
20 Nishida Yoshiaki
was ripening,’ and in October, ‘The men from the prefecture came, and
all the tenants spent the day showing them their fields.’ As Table 2.2
shows, the rent reductions Køichi and other tenant farmers in Koshin
obtained by these means were considerably lower than in the recent past,
even though they were reeling from the effects of the depression: 12.5
percent in 1930, 20 percent in 1931 and 10 percent in 1932. Clearly,
Koshin’s tenant farmers had lost the initiative in dealing with their land-
lords and seeking, by means of united action, to improve their lives.
Why was this the case? One reason was that many tenant farmers had
borrowed money from their landlords in the past, and their inability to
repay what they owed during the depression years made it difficult for
them to adopt a strong stance toward rent reductions. To cite the case of
the Nishiyamas again, Køichi recorded in February 1932 that ‘my inability
to repay the interest due on the loan from Mr Kazama of Aoyama hamlet
[his main landlord] is inexcusable.’ Another reason was that, while some
tenant farmers opted, as had the Nishiyamas, to attempt to ride out the
depression by increasing their cash income from non-agricultural sources,
others remained focused on securing rent reductions on the plots of land
they cultivated. Such differing survival strategies, not to mention the
success of some at new cash-generating activities and the failure – and
increasing indebtedness – of others, made it difficult for tenant farmers
in any one community to agree on what steps to take. As shown in Table
2.3, the number of tenancy disputes nationwide concerning demands for
rent reductions stagnated between 1930 and 1933, and the number of
disputes concerning tenancy rights – that is, disputes triggered by land-
lord attempts to evict tenants, typically so that the landlords could farm
the land themselves – rapidly increased. During the Showa Depression,
the tenant farmers’ movement was thrown on the defensive.
Another trend observable in Koshin during the depression years was
the division of residents into two rival political camps, one (the Sonseikai)
associated with the Seiy¨kai political party and the other (the Shinbo-
kukai), with the Minseitø. This first became apparent in 1931, when the
residents of the upper ward within the hamlet were unable to agree on a
single headman and so elected two, one from each camp. That in itself
would complicate the running of the hamlet until 1937, when the stand-
off ended, and it would lead to similar polarization among all hamlet
residents while it lasted. What was noteworthy about that polarization
was that most Koshin tenant farmers came to support the camp associ-
ated with the Seiy¨kai, generally regarded as a bastion of landlord interests
throughout Japan and opposed to any legislation that might bolster tenancy
rights, while most landlords and owner-cultivators came to support the
Minseitø camp. Granted, there were no proletarian political parties for
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 21
1111 Koshin’s tenant farmers to support at this time, the Rønøtø (Labor–Farmer
2111 Party) having already been banned by the authorities and no successor
3 groups formed in Niigata, but the outcome is still startling to say the
4 least. It probably can be explained by the fact that the Seiy¨kai favored
5111 efforts to induce recovery in rice prices, something that appealed to tenant
6 farmers in a major rice-producing region, while landlord support for the
7 Minseitø might be explained by that party’s advocacy of economic
8 austerity, which coincided with their reluctance to bear the costs of
9 irrigation improvements and other agricultural public works (Nishida and
1011 Kubo 1991: 1056–9). Whatever the explanation, it appears that a political
1 divide now opened between landlords and tenants in Koshin. Disputes of
2 the sort that had prevailed in the 1920s were no longer possible, but their
3111 confrontation continued, and deepened, in new form.
4
5
6 Toward equality in rural Japan during the war years
7 The so-called Fifteen Years War may have begun with the Manchurian
8 Incident of 1931, but it was not until after the outbreak of hostilities with
9 China in 1937 that national mobilization was proclaimed in Japan, and
20111 not until after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the
1 war effort began affecting virtually every aspect of the lives of the
2 Japanese people. Køichi’s diary recorded the first funeral for a soldier
3 from the village of Sakaiwa in December 1937. The number of local men
4 killed in action steadily increased thereafter, and from 1941 on the village
5111 held joint rather than individual funerals for them, including for the first
6 time in December of that year a soldier born and raised in Koshin hamlet.
7 The number of war dead escalated in the final two years of the war, with
8 25 of the total of 37 deaths in combat of young men from Koshin occur-
9 ring in 1944 and 1945. Almost one in four of the 139 households in the
30111 hamlet had experienced the death of a family member (Nishida and Kubo
1 1991: 1071). Nor was that the only burden they had to endure. As the
2 war situation worsened after 1942, they were called upon to surrender
3 all metal objects in their possession to the authorities, including ‘the
4 handing over of Buddhist altar fittings’ (Køichi’s diary, August 1943),
5 and to dig up their allotted share of ‘pine roots to make turpentine’ for
6 military use (December 1944).
7 But far and away the greatest pressure placed on rural Japan during
8 the war was for increased food production. The rural economy had begun
9 to recover from the depression in about 1935, and from 1937 on, with a
40111 boost from the inflation induced by increased military spending, farming
1 had become profitable again. By dint of increased rice sales and once-
2111 again flourishing by-employments, the Nishiyamas were able to begin
22 Nishida Yoshiaki
paying off their massive debts, and by 1942 they had completed the task,
owing nothing. As their example illustrates, during the early years of the
war tenant farmers had re-emerged as small-scale commodity producers.
Buttressing their position even further was a series of measures imple-
mented by the state to assure adequate food supplies in wartime, which
had the effect of rewarding tenants as the actual cultivators of the land
and curtailing the rights of their landlords: the 1938 Farmland Adjustment
Law, which aimed at encouraging the establishment of owner-cultivators
and the reinforcement of cultivating rights (reviving and expanding on
earlier efforts in that sphere that had lapsed during the depression);
the 1939 Farm Rent Control Ordinance; the 1941 Emergency Measures
for the Management of Farmland and Special Control Ordinance on
Farmland Prices; and the 1942 Staple Food Control Law, which estab-
lished a two-tier pricing structure for the now mandatory delivery of all
rice except that needed for subsistence to government warehouses, with
a considerably higher price paid to tenant-producers than to landlords
delivering rent rice.
There would be two notable developments in Koshin during the latter
part of this period. The first was in 1941, when residents of the most
densely populated lower ward of the hamlet demanded that their ward
be divided into two, with each given the same quotas for deliveries of
rice and receipt of rationed goods as the other wards. Protests from some
of the wealthier residents elsewhere in the hamlet that this would ‘divide
the community’ caused delay, but the reform was implemented in 1942,
leading to a better deal for the many tenant farmer households in the
original lower ward and more equitable burden-sharing among all house-
holds in the hamlet.
The second development was the launching of a campaign among
Koshin’s tenant farmers, Nishiyama Køichi included, for the right to
purchase the land they cultivated under the terms of the state program
to establish owner-cultivators, as revised in 1943. Rents on paddy fields
in Koshin had always been comparatively low, a legacy of the periodic
land redistribution system (warichi seido) of past centuries in this and
other districts that were subject to harsh weather and frequent crop fail-
ures. Simply put, tenants rented a standard ‘household’s worth’ (ikken
mae) of land that consisted of 1.8 chø of paddy, 2.9 tan of dry fields and
1.6 tan of housing and other land, a total of 2.25 chø, and paid a flat rate
of 11.12 koku of rice in rent on the lot. That might be recalculated as a
rent of 6.17 to (.617 koku) per tan on the rice paddy in their allotment
and, given that the Nishiyama’s yield per tan of paddy in 1943 amounted
to 2.55 koku, that worked to a rent of slightly less than 25 percent of
output. With the increase in rice prices payable to cultivators on the one
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 23
1111 hand, the value of tenancy rights (what might be earned by selling what
2111 one produced above subsistence and rent payment needs) also rose, and
3 with state controls on rents and land prices on the other hand, the value
4 of paddy and other land to landlords declined. When the state issued new
5111 guidelines to encourage the creation of owner-cultivators in 1943, which
6 included changes in how the purchase price of land would be calculated
7 to reflect recently imposed controls on both rents and land prices, the
8 increasing value of tenancy rights per tan in Koshin came to coincide
9 with the declining official price of land per tan at some 300 yen. For the
1011 first time, the land they cultivated was available for purchase at a price
1 that made economic sense to local tenant farmers, and they seized the
2 opportunity to attempt to become landowners. Not all local landlords
3111 proved willing to accept the offers they made at those low official prices,
4 however, and not until May of 1945, after what Køichi noted in his diary
5 as ‘a request that they cooperate in resolving the crisis facing the nation
6 by permitting the creation of owner-cultivators’, did the last of them
7 concede.More than 90 percent of the tenanted land in Koshin was then
8 purchased by its cultivators, at 24 times its rental value in the case of
9 paddy (the multiple would rise to 40 times during the postwar land
20111 reform), and 33 times its rental value in the case of dry fields (to rise to
1 48 times during the land reform) plus the payment of fairly modest ‘gratu-
2 ities’ (tsutsumi gane) to former landowners in both cases. Calling for
3 cooperation in the war effort, as Koshin’s tenant farmers did, was in
4 marked contrast to the anti-war stance taken in the late 1930s by leaders
5111 of the National Farmers’ Union, testifying to the powerful effects of
6 national mobilization thereafter, but their determination to gain owner-
7 ship of the land they cultivated also testifies to the potential that existed
8 for solution of the land tenure problems of rural Japan even before the
9 postwar land reform. Nor were Koshin’s tenant farmers alone in seizing
30111 the chance that the 1943 revision of the program to establish owner-culti-
1 vators provided. More than 50 percent of all the households to take
2 advantage of the program since its inception in 1926 did so during or
3 after 1943, and more than 50 percent of all the land transferred under its
4 auspices was transferred during or after that same year.
5 Japan’s wartime regime had exacted a heavy toll on Koshin’s resi-
6 dents, not only in the lives of its young men lost in battle, but also in
7 the increasingly difficult struggle they themselves faced in meeting the
8 hamlet’s quotas for rice deliveries to the state and supplying other requi-
9 sitioned goods. And yet that very wartime regime had also contributed
40111 to irreversible movement toward equality within the community. Even
1 before Koshin’s tenant farmers had campaigned successfully to rise into
2111 the ranks of owner-cultivators – itself made possible by the government’s
24 Nishida Yoshiaki
intense concern about the impact of urban food shortages on the war
effort – they had lobbied successfully for fairer burden-sharing among
the wards and, as fellow rice-producers, joined together with existing
owner-cultivators in frequent ward and hamlet meetings to agree how
production targets might be met. Their status within the hamlet rose, as
did the status of tenant farmers elsewhere in Japan, as their contributions
to the community became increasingly clear.

Farmers’ responses to the postwar Occupation and its

reforms
For farmers like Nishiyama Køichi who had done everything they could
to sustain the war effort on the home front, the announcement on August
15, 1945 by Emperor Hirohito that the war had ended was like a bolt of
lightning in a clear blue sky. Køichi recorded on that day, ‘it seems that
the whole household has fallen into the depths of despair,’ and on the next
that ‘I’m in no mood for work, when I think of our being ruled by the
Americans, British, Russians and Chinese.’ On August 25, the order
having come down to disband the local Military Reservists’ Association
and destroy its records, he wrote that ‘fighting back the tears, I helped
. . . set fire to everything.’ Then in December 1946 he attended a feast in
honor of the hamlet chief, who had been forced to resign in the purge
of public officials, and ‘about 30 of us in posts in all the wards made
merry.’ It is clear that Køichi was not looking forward to the Occupation
and remained caught up in the psychology of the wartime era.
And yet that Occupation was to bring an unprecedented measure of
democratization to the Japanese countryside, as well as to the rest of
Japan, and men like Køichi and communities like Koshin were soon to
be actively involved in many of the reform initiatives emanating from
Occupation headquarters in Tokyo. As is well known, a new constitution
was promulgated in 1947, giving the right to vote to women as well as
men and making such posts as prefectural governor and city, town and
village mayor subject to election for the first time. Members of the city,
town and village agricultural land committees that played such a crucial
role in the postwar land reform were also elected, according to the formula
of two owner-cultivators, three landlords and five tenant farmers per
committee as a means of limiting the influence of landlords. So, too, were
elections held for members of the food regulation committees that insured
the smooth delivery of food supplies at a time of great scarcity, and for
directors of the newly created agricultural cooperatives.
Køichi was elected as one of the two owner-cultivators on the agri-
cultural land committee in his area and quickly became deeply involved
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 25
1111 in the land reform. While the role of Occupation headquarters and offi-
2111 cials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in that reform should
3 not be ignored, neither should the contributions of those land commit-
4 tees and the many individuals mobilized at the hamlet level be overlooked.
5111 Enjoying the trust of other rural residents and intimately familiar with
6 local farming and land tenure, they carried out all the basic work at the
7 ‘front lines’ of the reform, insuring both the rapidity and thoroughness
8 with which it was effected.
9 Similarly, the food delivery system depended on continued coopera-
1011 tion within rural hamlets. Hamlets had been made responsible for meeting
1 delivery targets during the war, and because of the severe food shortages
2 that still afflicted Japan’s cities until late in 1947, the same system was
3111 maintained in the early years of the Occupation. That it provided most
4 of the food supplies needed was an important element in restoring social
5 stability and sustaining popular support for Occupation policies, but doing
6 so was no easy matter for farmers, especially not when crops were poor.
7 In Koshin in the autumn of 1946, for example, it was clear that the rice
8 harvest was disappointing and that some two dozen households had expe-
9 rienced a disastrous year. After a long series of ward meetings in which
20111 farmers debated what to do, it was finally decided at a hamlet-wide
1 meeting that (1) the volume of rice the community was expected to hand
2 over that year was the absolute maximum it could manage without endan-
3 gering local subsistence; and (2) while every household would contribute
4 its fare share of the total requisition, any households left without suffi-
5111 cient food to tide them over until the next year’s harvest would be given
6 rice by other members of the community (Køichi’s diary, May 11, 1947).
7 This was a notable example of ‘rice roots’ democracy in action, reflecting
8 the willingness of hamlet residents to do their part in feeding the nation,
9 but at the same time demonstrating their determination to protect the most
30111 disadvantaged within their midst.
1
2
Farmers’ commitment to raising output during the
3
1950s
4
5 With virtually all Japanese farmers now owner-cultivators in the aftermath
6 of the land reform, rural interest in measures to increase agricultural out-
7 put rose dramatically. In Koshin, a portion of local paddy fields was trans-
8 formed into uniform parcels of one tan each in a program of land
9 adjustment carried out between the autumn of 1948 and spring of 1949,
40111 and a survey of agricultural land committees in August 1950 to assess the
1 impact of the land reform confirmed that similar land improvements were
2111 now being considered throughout the country (Nishida 1998: 201–14).
26 Nishida Yoshiaki
Unlike food deliveries, however, land adjustment was not something
that farmers in a given hamlet could manage strictly on their own. The
cooperation of neighboring hamlets in the determination of new field
boundaries, the transfer of some ownership rights and the location of new
irrigation and drainage channels were needed, as were united efforts
throughout the improvement district in securing subsidies from the pre-
fecture and the state. According to his diary, Køichi, then a hamlet offi-
cial, made numerous visits to the adjacent hamlet of Kitaba in 1953 ‘as a
representative of Koshin’ to negotiate land transfers, finally succeeding a
few months later. Then at the end of 1954 he travelled to Tokyo with offi-
cials of the local land improvement district to seek state assistance in the
construction of drainage culverts and the laying out of drainage channels:

We divided the assignments up among ourselves, with some going

to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and others going else-
where. I went on my own to visit the home of Section Chief Ogawa,
who was in charge of the drainage work at Tsudanuma in Chiba
Prefecture.

Table 2.4 Hamlet meetings (yoriai) in Koshin, 1942–60

Year Hamlet Ward Officials

meetings meetings committee
1942 13 7 14
1943 12 9 20
1944 10 11 9
1945 8 5 1
1946 8 12 19
1947 8 25 17
1948 15 14 13
1949 11 18 30
1950 5 16 41
1951 7 18 35
1952 6 9 32
1953 3 4 16
1954 5 3 42
1955 3 1 –
1956 5 3 –
1957 5 3 –
1958 3 2 –
1959 4 6 25
1960 3 7 29
Source: Calculated from Nishiyama Køichi nikki, 1925–50 and 1951–75.
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 27
1111 The more deeply rural hamlets became involved in land improvements
2111 to increase and stabilize agricultural output, the more power inevitably
3 accrued to the hamlet officials who were directly involved in the neces-
4 sary negotiations, and the committee of hamlet officials steadily developed
5111 into the key organ in determining and executing hamlet policy. As shown
6 in Table 2.4, the number of ward and hamlet-wide meetings in Koshin
7 decreased during the 1950s, while the number of meetings held by
8 hamlet officials increased markedly. At the same time, the attention of
9 farmers was inevitably drawn to those politicians and bureaucrats whose
1011 influence at the prefectural and national level might prove useful in
1 securing funding for the land improvements they wanted. No doubt that
2 was a factor in the higher than average turnouts at elections for the lower
3111 house of the Diet in Niigata, a predominantly agricultural prefecture,
4 during the 1950s, and the higher than average support for candidates from
5 the Socialist and Communist parties during the same decade (Tables 2.5
6 and 2.6).
7 At any rate, it can be said that during the 1950s farmers dedicated
8 themselves to any and all efforts to increase agricultural output. In Koshin,
9 young farmers organized a rice cultivation research group in 1951, and
20111 in July of that same year they held a conference, to which they invited
1 engineers from the prefecture, to consider reclaiming new arable land
2 from the marshes the hamlet owned. In July of 1956 local farmers estab-
3 lished an association to reclaim about 20 chø of marshland, each farmer
4 agreeing to contribute toward the cost, and efforts to secure additional
5111 government funding for the project began. That same year, the Nishiyamas
6 joined with some of their neighbors to purchase a mechanical cultivator
7
8
9 Table 2.5 Voter turnout in Lower House elections, 1946–60
30111 Niigata Prefecture National average
1
2 Year Men Women Total Men Women Total
3 1946 80.2 63.2 70.3 78.6 67.0 72.1
4 1947 72.8 55.2 63.5 74.9 61.6 67.9
5 1949 81.8 64.4 72.5 80.7 67.9 74.0
6 1952 87.3 77.2 81.9 80.5 72.8 76.4
1953 86.0 76.3 80.7 78.4 70.4 74.2
7
1955 88.0 80.6 84.1 80.0 72.1 75.8
8 1958 86.7 78.4 82.3 79.8 74.4 77.0
9 1960 84.4 79.1 81.6 76.0 71.2 73.5
40111
Sources: For 1946 and 1947, Mainichi nenkan, 1948 and 1949; for 1949, 1952, 1953 and
1 1955, Nihon tøkei nenkan, 1950, 1952–54; for 1958, Dai 28 kai sh¨giin giin søsenkyo ichiran;
2111 for 1960, Dai 29 kai sh¨giin giin søsenkyo ichiran.
28 Nishida Yoshiaki
Table 2.6 Voting rates for progressive and conservative parties, 1947–60

Niigata Prefecture National average

Year Progressive Conservative Progressive Conservative
parties (%) parties (%) parties (%) parties (%)
1947 32.9 60.7 30.0 59.6
1949 33.3 64.0 23.3 63.0
1952 29.3 69.6 23.8 66.9
1953 35.7 59.5 28.5 65.4
1955 36.5 57.8 31.2 63.2
1958 38.1 49.9 35.5 57.8
1960 39.4 55.1 30.5 57.6
Source: Sh¨giin giin søsenkyo ichiran for each year.
Notes:
1 Progressive parties: Japan Socialist Party and Japan Communist Party.
2 Conservative parties:
1947: Japan Liberal Party, Japan Democratic Party and National Cooperative Party
1949: Democratic Liberal Party, Japan Democratic Party and National Cooperative Party
1952: Liberal Party, Japan Progressive Party, Cooperative Party
1953: Liberal Party, Japan Progressive Party
1955: Japan Democratic Party, Liberal Party
1958 on: Liberal Democratic Party

for shared use. Many similar examples of the initiative taken at this time
by farmers elsewhere in the country to increase output could be cited.
To mention only one, farmers in 32 of the 48 hamlets in Azuma village
in Ibaraki Prefecture decided to establish agricultural research groups
during the 1950s for such purposes as developing better seed strains and
improving the local soil (Nishida and Kase 2000: 13–14).
A final point to be made about the 1950s is that most agricultural legis-
lation of the early postwar era – for example, a land improvement law
passed in 1949, a law to provide exceptional aid to farming in regions
subject to harsh winter weather in 1951, a law to stabilize the prices of
agricultural commodities in 1953 and a law to provide financial aid to
agricultural improvement projects in 1955 – sought to establish a solid
basis for farming operations in Japan and therefore provided welcome
support for the efforts of farmers themselves.

The era of rapid economic growth and its impact on

farmers
Japan’s so-called ‘economic miracle’ – the sustained high rates of eco-
nomic growth that began in the late 1950s and continued until the early
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 29
1111 1970s – brought about profound structural changes in Japanese agricul-
2111 ture. As a result of the rapidly expanding industrial and tertiary sectors,
3 the primary sector’s share in national income fell from 14.6 percent in
4 1960 to 6.7 percent in 1975, and the proportion of the labor force engaged
5111 in agriculture fell from 30 percent to 12.6 percent in the same period. As
6 Jussaume discusses later in this volume, there was also a rapid increase
7 in part-time farming during these years, and the share of income that
8 farm households earned from their agricultural operations fell from a
9 national average of 52.2 percent in 1960 to 32.2 percent in 1975.
1011 Nevertheless, both the income of farm households and the value of their
1 assets rose dramatically, together increasing by 8.4 times between 1960
2 and 1975, well in excess of the threefold increase in consumer prices
3111 during that period (calculated from data in Nøsei chøsa iinkai 1977). In
4 other words, despite the decline of the agricultural sector as a source of
5 national income and employment, the growth of the farm household
6 economy kept pace with the growth achieved in the rest of the economy
7 because of ever greater income from non-agricultural employment and
8 the rising value of the land and other assets that farm households owned.
9 Nowhere was the seeming paradox of declining family farming, on the
20111 one hand, and the improving economic status of farm households, on the
1 other, more noticeable than in rural communities that were located close
2 to cities.
3 As mentioned previously, farmers in Koshin had decided in 1956 to
4 drain some of the hamlet’s communally owned marshland to create addi-
5111 tional paddy fields, but their repeated efforts to secure additional funding
6 for the project from the prefecture and the Ministry of Agriculture and
7 Forestry had not met with any success. Objections to the project surfaced
8 in the hamlet in the early 1960s, as Niigata City began to expand into
9 nearby rural areas and local land prices rose, and a series of meetings was
30111 held to consider whether to proceed with land reclamation for farming or
1 opt for urban development instead. Køichi himself leaned toward the view
2 of Niigata construction companies and politicians that urban development
3 was preferable, but others remained unconvinced. As he noted in his diary
4 on December 25, 1963, ‘Serious debate over the pros and cons of the
5 reclamation project went on until half past midnight.’ Finally, a vote was
6 taken on February 3, 1964 at a gathering of all those who had agreed to
7 take part in the reclamation project, and Køichi reported the results as
8 follows: ‘Of 91 votes cast, 35 were in favor [of reclamation], 54 were
9 opposed, and 2 votes were invalid. So reclamation [of arable land] has
40111 been postponed indefinitely.’ It is fair to say that at this point the major-
1 ity of Koshin’s residents were no longer interested in expanding acreage
2111 for farming, but rather had their eye on the conversion of farm land to
30 Nishida Yoshiaki
non-agricultural use. In fact, in 1966, after further steep rises in agricul-
tural land prices, paddy fields were converted to housing land in
Shimohara, that part of Koshin closest to Niigata City , and the No. 1 and
No. 2 Koshin housing developments were soon under construction.
The growing interest of Koshin’s farmers in the non-agricultural devel-
opment of their land in the early 1960s was matched by their growing
involvement in politics at all levels. Indeed, development and politics
would become increasingly intertwined in the years ahead. Elections were
held in April 1963 for the prefectural assembly, mayor of Niigata City
(in which Koshin was now included as part of its rural districts) and the
city assembly. Køichi recorded in his diary on March 9 that:

A joint briefing was held at the Man’eiji by Øsawa on city politics

and Diet Member Takahashi and Assemblyman Yoshida Yoshihei on
the prefectural assembly. The place was bursting at the seams with
people.

The incumbent mayor of Niigata City, Watanabe Køtarø, had not attended,
but it was generally thought that Koshin would support his re-election.
On election day itself Køichi wrote that he ‘was up all night getting
reports by telephone of the votes cast for mayor and city assemblyman,’
and as he appears to have hoped, Watanabe and Øsawa, as well as
Yoshida, emerged victorious. Then at the general election in November
of that same year, Køichi paid ‘a courtesy visit’ to the office of incum-
bent Diet Member Takahashi Seiichirø (of the conservative Liberal
Democratic Party), and went the day after the election with the head of
Koshin hamlet to congratulate Takahashi on his victory and drink some
‘celebration sake.’
In 1967, as the creation of further building sites on marshland in Koshin
commenced and as both regional and national elections were scheduled
to take place in April and June respectively, hamlet officials found them-
selves devoting just about equal time to issues of ‘development’ and
‘elections’ at virtually every meeting they held. As Køichi recorded on
February 18 of that year:

At the meeting of officials we discussed Mayor Watanabe’s

supporters’ association and the future of rice paddies near the marshes.
We now know what the costs of developing those paddies will be,
and so we decided to get all those concerned together to decide what
to do. We also discussed the election for the city assembly and how
we should handle it.
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 31
1111 Or again on March 2: ‘Discussion of the marshes and the city assembly.’
2111 Such entries were repeated in subsequent weeks, and so it is pretty obvious
3 that hamlet officials were aiming at the election of a mayor and a city
4 assemblyman who would support the sort of ‘development’ they and other
5111 residents had in mind.
6 A concrete example of the links between ‘elections’ and ‘develop-
7 ment’ and between politicians and hamlet residents was the purchase of
8 one of the hamlet’s marshes by Diet Member Takahashi in 1968. It is
9 clear from Køichi’s entry of July 21 of that year that the person who had
1011 raised the possibility of purchase was Takahashi himself:
1
2 When we heard that Diet Member Takahashi was interested in buying
3111 the marsh, hamlet officials and Assemblyman Kaneda went to see
4 him, and we also talked about the need for new roads to ease farm
5 work. I had a drink and got home at 5.30.
6
7 Yet there is no doubt that most local farmers were enthusiastic about the
8 sale. On August 2, Køichi wrote:
9
20111 After discussions at the ward level about whether the sale of the
1 marsh to Diet Member Takahashi should be made, we held a hamlet
2 meeting to decide the matter. Although a few people from wards 1
3 and 2 expressed opposition, we agreed in the end that the sale should
4 go ahead on terms decided by the hamlet officials, because the sooner
5111 the marsh was developed, the sooner the value of nearby paddy fields
6 would rise.
7 (emphasis added)
8
9 The overwhelming majority of hamlet residents favored the sale on the
30111 grounds that it would lead to higher prices for other land in the commu-
1 nity. Attention now turned to the selling price, in which everyone
2 developed a keen interest. On August 21, Køichi wrote:
3
4 We seesawed back and forth between ¥400,000 and ¥600,000 before
5 agreeing that the midway figure of ¥500,000 might stand a greater
6 chance of success. I alone had pressed for asking for ¥600,000 as
7 the starting price for negotiations, but to no avail. Then Takahashi’s
8 secretary Hirashima was summoned, and Øsawa managed to control
9 his nerves and tell him calmly that we wanted ¥500,000. That was
40111 accepted without any quibbles whatsoever, and the contract was
1 signed and sealed when Takahashi-sensei returned home a few days
2111 later.
32 Nishida Yoshiaki
It is no wonder that hamlet representatives had ‘seesawed back and forth’
in deciding the price for the marsh, and no wonder that they had been
nervous about putting their agreed price forward. After all, they were
attempting to maximize the return from what had long been regarded as
a pretty useless bit of hamlet property, and it probably surprised them
that the fairly high price they announced was accepted ‘without quibble.’
It is no doubt also the case, however, that Diet Member Takahashi profited
from the transaction, given the continued increases in local land prices
thereafter. Deals such as this one and the other assistance conservative
politicians provided to increase the income of farm households and the
value of farm household assets played an important role in generating
ever greater electoral support for the Liberal Democratic Party in rural
Japan during the high growth era.

Farming and farmers since 1970: whither rural Japan?

While rice production remained at high levels during the 1960s, rice
consumption steadily declined. Faced with a structural surplus that was
also costing a great deal in subsidies to producers, the government
launched measures in 1970 to reduce the acreage (gentan) planted to rice.
The theory among policymakers was that rice farmers would diversify to
other crops but, as we shall see, these gentan policies tended to promote
their ‘diversification’ out of farming itself and, ironically, to make many
of them focus ever more exclusively on rice in their remaining farming
operations.
In Koshin, where rice continued to be the major crop, a general meeting
had been held in January 1970 to discuss whether or not to undertake
drainage improvements in some paddy fields near a marsh that were still
subject to excessive dampness. Opinion was generally against the plan:

Various views were expressed, but what with all the talk about cutting
back on rice output we just don’t think we can undertake such a
project unless substantial funding comes from elsewhere.

In April, a conclusion was reached:

A general meeting of all farmers. There was discussion as to whether

or not to carry forward the drainage project . . . but it was decided
that in this era of reduced rice output it made no sense and so the
project was abandoned.

The number of farmers in the hamlet who were dedicated to efforts

to improve agriculture had already decreased, and, as mentioned in the
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 33
1111 preceding section, most farmers had been drawn to getting as high a price
2111 as possible from the sale of reclaimed marshland for urban development,
3 expecting that the value of their own land would increase as a result.
4 Indeed, the two topics that were discussed most enthusiastically in the
5111 hamlet in 1970 were whether Koshin would be named a district for urban
6 development under the terms of the new city planning law of 1969 and
7 how much the hamlet would earn from selling reclaimed marshland as
8 sites for the new vocational high school and police academy that the
9 prefecture had decided to build. In Koshin, located as it was so close to
1011 Niigata City, a retreat from farming was well under way.
1 What about farming communities that were located at a considerable
2 distance from cities? To answer that question I would like to refer once
3111 again to the case of Azuma village in Ibaraki Prefecture (for details, see
4 Nishida and Kase 2000: chapter 2). Although non-agricultural employ-
5 ment had risen somewhat during the 1960s, especially among the school-
6 leaving children of local farmers, most households in the village remained
7 engaged ‘solely’ or ‘mainly’ in agriculture. After 1970, however, when
8 measures to reduce rice acreage went into force, non-
9 agricultural employment increased markedly, and by the mid-1970s most
20111 local farm households derived more of their income from non-agricultural
1 than from agricultural activity. Yet at the very same time, and despite offi-
2 cial efforts to discourage rice production, the number of farm households
3 growing nothing but rice had also increased markedly. For example, the
4 proportion of farm households in the Toyoshima section of Azuma who
5111 concentrated exclusively on rice production rose from 67.4 percent in 1965
6 to 93.9 percent in 1975. The explanation for this unexpected outcome is
7 twofold: that hardly any other crop could yield more profit than rice, and
8 that all other crops required considerably more time to cultivate success-
9 fully than farmers who were simultaneously engaged in non-agricultural
30111 employment could possibly manage to provide. That Japan had then and
1 continues to have the lowest rate of food self-sufficiency among the devel-
2 oped nations of the world (just 42 percent on a calorie basis in 1999) and
3 produces more than is needed for domestic consumption only in rice is
4 largely owing to the above considerations.
5 Let us return now to the experiences of the Nishiyama household and
6 Koshin hamlet after 1970. Dealing with the Nishiyamas first, they
7 purchased nine tan of paddy fields in Iwamuro village in 1973, paying
8 for the purchase with a bit over half of the ¥13 million they had received
9 from the sale of only one tan of their original holding in Koshin for
40111 construction of an access road to the Hokuriku expressway. They now
1 owned a total of 3.6 chø, which would prove to be the most land they
2111 ever owned and would mark the height of their prosperity. As the fields
34 Nishida Yoshiaki
they had just purchased were some six miles from Koshin, instead of
cultivating them themselves they leased them out (which recently relaxed
regulations dating from the land reform era allowed) for an annual rent
of ¥370,000. In one sense, the tenant farmers who had become owner-
cultivators back in the mid-1940s had now risen to the status of
‘cultivating landlords.’ In another sense, however, they had become spec-
ulators in land, and speculation of that and other sorts would prove to be
their undoing.
What one should bear in mind is that the purchase of those nine
tan in Iwamuro had been made possible not by the Nishiyama’s profits
from farming, but by their profits from development – more specifically,
from the dramatic increases in land values that property in the path of
development, such as theirs in the case of the Hokuriku expressway, had
produced. Nor does the purchase seem to have been based as much on
expectations of a favorable return from renting the land out for farming
as on expectations of substantial increases in the value of that land in
future. Køichi had by now retired as head of the household, and his eldest
son was in charge of their affairs. Like others in the community, the latter
saw little point in striving to increase yields on their paddy fields now
that gentan policies were in operation and turned his attention to other
means of increasing the family’s wealth, mainly by playing the stock
market. By 1976 his investment losses had mounted to ¥18 million, and
they had no option but to sell three tan of dry fields to cover the debt.
Further losses by 1981 led to an impasse between father and son – as
Køichi noted in his diary: ‘We talked about what to do with all those
debts but could come to no agreement’ – but in 1983 they had to sell
2.6 tan of rice paddy. And even then his son did not stop investing, and
making losses, in shares. With debts of almost ¥300 million in 1987, they
were obliged to surrender ‘title to all the farm land’ still in their posses-
sion, leaving them ‘with only the house and the land on which it stood.’
In short, the prosperous cultivating landlords of 1973 had nothing to do
with farming 14 years later. The dramatic rise in land prices during the
era of rapid economic growth had transformed the family’s attitude toward
its land holdings from a site of agricultural production to a capital asset.
Without the inflated values of that land as collateral, it would have been
impossible for Køichi’s son to become so deeply – and disastrously –
involved in the stock market.
Life in Koshin, too, became increasingly troubled after 1970, with
‘disharmony in the hamlet’ (buraku no fuwa) surfacing early on and
proving well-nigh impossible to resolve. Here, too, the main source of
the problem was development. In 1970 itself, 15 local farmers who had
withdrawn from the reclamation association back in 1956 because they
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 35
1111 objected to the costs they were expected to bear now insisted that as
2111 reclamation had ceased and property development begun they were enti-
3 tled to their share of the proceeds from the sale of a communal asset, a
4 position with which those who had stuck with the association as its
5111 purpose changed from reclamation to development did not agree. Differ-
6 ences also emerged among the members of the association as to whether
7 the proceeds from sales of marshland should be shared out among them
8 or deposited in the community’s account. Toward the end of 1970, Køichi
9 noted with a degree of exasperation: ‘We’ve looked at why things are
1011 not going well in the hamlet from every angle, but there’s still no solu-
1 tion in sight.’ These first two issues eventually were resolved in 1972,
2 when it was decided to share out most of the proceeds and, thanks to the
3111 mediation of high-ranking officials of the land improvement district, to
4 give each of the 15 farmers who had left the association ¥770,000, or
5 ¥100,000 less than the others, but squabbles over money continued to
6 erupt within the community. In 1973, for example, there was disagree-
7 ment over whether the owners of the rice seedling beds that were being
8 taken for the access road to the Hokuriku expressway should receive more
9 money than the owners of ordinary paddy fields, and residents polarized
20111 into ‘a seedling bed faction and a paddy field faction,’ as well as arguing
1 among themselves about what to do with the payment that would be made
2 into the hamlet’s account. Numerous meetings were held from 1974
3 onward to ‘restore communal harmony,’ but relations among residents
4 remained strained and, as a result, hamlet officials had to spend more of
5111 their time in managing conflict than in carrying out their normal duties.
6 Granted, the situation in Koshin was exacerbated by its location in the
7 immediate environs of an expanding city, but no part of rural Japan proved
8 totally immune to the sort of changes described above. Even in Azuma,
9 located in a fairly remote part of Ibaraki Prefecture, there was a retreat
30111 from farming as gentan policies took effect, with the acreage planted to
1 rice declining by 21 percent between 1970 and 1990 and the total acreage,
2 including dry fields, devoted to farming declining by 9 percent in the
3 same period (Nishida and Kase 2000: 12–13). As local households became
4 more and more involved in non-agricultural employment, it is highly
5 likely that there, too, it became increasingly difficult to organize resi-
6 dents for the performance of essential communal tasks and to maintain
7 any sort of viable consensus in local affairs.
8 An even more recent trend throughout the country has been a marked
9 increase in the rate at which rural communities themselves have been
40111 disappearing. According to the World Census of Agriculture and Forestry,
1 the number of farming hamlets in Japan declined from 142,377 in 1980
2111 (of which 13,869 contained nine or fewer households) to 140,144 in 1990
36 Nishida Yoshiaki
(of which 21,721 contained nine or fewer households), which by a simple
calculation means that hamlets were disappearing at the rate of more than
220 a year. By the year 2000, only 135,179 hamlets remained (of which
29,955 had nine or fewer households in residence), meaning that the pace
of disappearance had quickened to almost 500 a year. Given the rising
number of hamlets containing nine or fewer residents, it is not unrea-
sonable to expect that even more hamlets will disappear even more quickly
in future. Rapid economic growth since 1960 had led to increases in the
income of farmers and the value of their assets, bringing unprecedented
prosperity to rural Japan, but in that very process farming became increas-
ingly marginalized within many rural communities, and those com-
munities themselves, on which local farmers had depended so heavily in
the past, faced mounting problems and, in a growing number of cases,
ceased to exist. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that Japanese agri-
culture is now faced with a crisis that will decide its whole future.

References
Isobe Toshihiko. 1977. ‘Køchi seiri o kakki to suru tochi hensei no tenkai.’ In
‘Zenji nisshi’ kaidai 8, ed. Toyohara kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shup-
pankai.
Kawaguchi Akira. 1977. ‘“Nisshi” ni miru nichijø seikatsu no keisei to shutai.’ In
‘Zenji nisshi’ kaidai 2, ed. Toyohara kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shup-
pankai.
Murakami Rinzø. 1997. Tsuchi no bungaku: Nagatsuka Takashi, Akutagawa
Ry¨nosuke. Tokyo: Kanrin shobø.
Nagatsuka Takashi. 1956. Tsuchi. 1956 edition. Tokyo: Kadokawa bunko.
Niigata-ken keizai nøgyø kumiai rengøkai. 1957. Kome ni kansuru shiryø.
Nishida Yoshiaki. 1998. ‘Nøchi kaikaku to nøson minshushugi.’ In Demokurashii
no høkai to saisei, ed. Minami Ryøshin, Nakamura Masanori and Nishizawa
Tamotsu. Tokyo: Nihon keizai hyøronsha.
–––– and Kase Kazutoshi. 2000. Kødo keizai seichøki no nøgyø mondai. Tokyo:
Nihon keizai hyøronsha.
–––– and Kubo Yasuo. 1991. Nishiyama Køichi nikki, 1925–1950. Tokyo: Tøkyø
daigaku shuppankai.
–––– 1998. Nishiyama Køichi nikki, 1951–1975. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shup-
pankai.
Nøchi seido shiryø sh¨sei hensan iinkai. 1969. Nøchi seido shiryø sh¨sei. Tokyo:
Ochanomizu shobø.
Nørinshø. 1974. Nøgyø keizai ruinen tøkei, vol. 1, ed. Nørinshø tøkei jøhøbu and
Nørin tøkei kenky¨kai.
Nøsei chøsa iinkai. 1977. Kaitei Nihon nøgyø kiso tøkei. Tokyo: Nørin tøkei kyøkai.
Takeda Tsutomu. 1977. ‘Kome “kedashi” gyø no eigyø keitai to seikaku.’ In ‘Zenji
nisshi’ kaidai 7, ed. Toyohara kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
 Change in twentieth-century rural Japan 37
1111 Toyohara kenky¨kai. 1977. Zenji nisshi – Yamagata ken Shønai heiya ni okeru
2111 ichi nømin no nisshi, Meiji 26–Shøwa 9 nen. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
3 Usami Shigeru. 1977a. ‘“Zenji nisshi” – Zenji to Tanzo ke no hitobito.’ In ‘Zenji
4 nisshi’ kaidai 1, ed. Toyohara kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
5111 –––– 1977b. ‘Wakase rench¨ no sekai.’ In ‘Zenji nisshi’ kaidai 6, ed. Toyohara
kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
6
Usui Yoshimi. 1956. ‘Kaisetsu.’ In Nagatsuka Takashi, Tsuchi. Tokyo: Kadokawa
7
bunko.
8 Waswo, Ann (trans.) 1989. The Soil by Nagatsuka Takashi: A Portrait of Rural
9 Life in Meiji Japan. London and New York: Routledge.
1011
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5
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7
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20111
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3 The women of rural Japan
An overview of the twentieth century
Økado Masakatsu

Introduction
Writing in 1995, a Japanese economist reported that ‘60 per cent of all
agricultural labor is now performed by women’ (Imamura 1995: 3). He
was correct, but his apparent surprise at this finding was misplaced. As
shown in Table 3.1, the proportion of women among those primarily
employed in farming has remained at approximately 60 percent since the
1960s. It is clear, therefore, that rural women have played an important
role in family farming for many years, but it seems equally clear that
most scholars – and, it might be added, agricultural policy makers – have
tended to overlook this fact.
Taking Imamura’s ‘finding’ as her starting point, Kumagai Sonoko has
noted in a recent literature survey that, although there was some research
on rural women carried out during the prewar period, most notably by
Maruoka Hideko (1937; reprinted 1980), it tended to focus on the prob-
lems those women faced as wives and mothers, and their labor in farming
was largely ignored (Kumagai 1995: 8–9). Nor was much attention paid
to the role of women in the extensive research into the history of family
farming and changes in the farm household economy during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries that was carried out by agricultural
economists and rural sociologists during the first four decades of the
postwar era. The labor contributions of women to farming remained
largely invisible.
Since the early 1990s, however, more and more research on the history
of rural women during the early modern and modern eras has been
published, in part reflecting contemporary concerns with the aging (and
‘feminization’) of the agricultural labor force, and in part reflecting the
development of women’s studies in general and greater sensitivity to
gender issues. Broadly speaking, that research can be divided into three
strands. First, research on the daily lives of rural women, as exemplified
 Women of rural Japan 39
1111 Table 3.1 Percentage of women among those primarily
2111 employed in farming
3 Year Persons primarily Of whom,
4 employed in farming % women
5111
6 1946 16,320,822 54.6
1960 14,541,624 58.8
7 1970 10,451,956 61.2
8 1980 6,973,085 61.7
9 1990 5,653,321 60.2
1011
Source: Nørinsuisanshø tøkei jøhøbu, Nøgyø sensasu ruinen
1 tøkeisho, 1992.
2 Note
3111 ‘Persons primarily employed in farming’ includes those whose
4 only work was in farming and those who did more days of
farm work than any other sort of work during the year in ques-
5 tion.
6
7
8 by Itagaki Kuniko’s study based on an analysis of articles in Ie no hikari
9 (Light of the Home), a magazine that began publication in 1925 and was
20111 widely read in the countryside (Itagaki 1992). Second, research shedding
1 new light on the functioning of farm families as economic units: for
2 example, Nishida Yoshiaki on the differences between farm households
3 and the households of industrial workers (Nishida 1997: 41–51); Tanimoto
4 Masayuki on the economic strategies adopted by farm households and
5111 their responsiveness to market stimuli (Tanimoto 1998); and Saitø Osamu
6 on the choices made by families (kazoku no sentaku) and the effect of
7 those choices on the farm household economy over the long term (Saitø
8 1998). Third, research dealing specifically with the role of women within
9 farm households (Saitø 1991; Økado and Yanagizawa 1996).
30111 In this chapter I will focus on the latter topic, tracing the continuities
1 and changes in the role of women in the operation of farm households
2 over the course of the twentieth century. No doubt there are some inter-
3 esting historical comparisons to be made with rural women elsewhere in
4 the developing/developed world, but I will have to defer consideration
5 of that topic to another time. Only a few contemporary comparisons will
6 be brought out in the concluding section.
7
8
Women in farm households during the early 1900s
9
40111 Perhaps not surprisingly, given the ‘invisibility’ of rural women, there is
1 very little documentation available on the working hours of farm fami-
2111 lies that distinguishes between the tasks performed by men and by women
40 Økado Masakatsu
Table 3.2 Hours of work performed by male and female members of farm
households, 1933 (national averages)

Age range Farm work By- House- Other Total

employments work
(days) (hours) (hours) (hours) (hours) (hours)
Males
Under 15 75 515 15 167 43 739
16–20 186 1,563 406 222 158 2,350
21–30 238 1,900 752 301 280 3,232
31–50 241 2,156 492 405 341 3,394
51–60 251 2,180 273 486 276 3,216
61–70 188 1,538 291 459 126 2,414
Over 70 200 1,167 53 574 67 1,860

Females
Under 15 50 314 57 407 36 814
16–20 140 1,090 151 924 59 2,224
21–30 197 1,530 103 1,340 91 3,064
31–50 210 1,666 124 1,554 95 3,440
51–60 163 1,106 101 1,710 95 3,012
61–70 130 748 29 1,680 53 2,510
Over 70 40 179 6 1,208 10 1,403
Source: Teikoku nøkai, Nøgyø no rødø jøtai ni kansuru chøsa, 1938.

in the early decades of the twentieth century. One particularly valuable

set of data that is available is that for 1933, which was published by the
Imperial Agricultural Association (Teikoku nøkai) on the basis of its rural
household economic surveys (see Table 3.2). From this we will now
examine how the tasks of farming, housework and by-employments were
distributed within farm families.
If we look at the age group from 31 to 50 years, people in the prime
of their working lives, it is apparent that the annual number of working
hours was almost the same for men and women at about 3,400 hours,
with both men and women spending a massive number of hours at work.
The distribution of labor tasks differed considerably between men and
women, however, with men being engaged in farm work for 2,100 hours,
in by-employments for 500 hours, in housework for 400 hours and in
other tasks for 300 hours. In contrast, women spent 1,600 hours in farm
work, 1,500 hours in housework, and 100 hours each in by-employments
and additional tasks. Unfortunately, we do not know how the distinction
was drawn between farm work and housework in this particular survey.
Moreover, the data reflect the average hours worked by farm families,
 Women of rural Japan 41
1111 with no regard to regional or class differences. But in spite of these short-
2111 comings, the data in the table do allow us to get a rough understanding
3 of how labor tasks were allocated between men and women in prewar
4 farm households. Male members of farm families worked principally at
5111 farming and were then to some extent engaged in tasks relating to by-
6 employments and housework. In contrast, women spent more or less the
7 same amount of time on farm work and housework. It is quite likely that
8 the type of housework carried out by men and women differed, with
9 women shouldering among other things the tasks of providing food and
1011 clothing, childcare and care for the sick and elderly, while men tended
1 to such tasks as repairing the house and maintaining the household’s tools
2 and equipment. These differences notwithstanding, it is clear that women
3111 in Japanese farm households were deeply involved in farm work as well
4 as in housework, and that the role they played, although different from
5 the role played by men, was indispensable to the household.
6 Let us now examine that role more closely. Table 3.3 shows the allo-
7 cation of labor tasks in four farm households in Niigata Prefecture in
8 1915. According to these data, with the exception of Household B where
9 the wife of the head of the family was the only adult woman present,
20111 two or three women were needed to carry out the housework in the house-
1 hold, and accordingly two or three women remained in residence. The
2 wife of the head of household (or inheriting son) was almost constantly
3 engaged in childbirth or childrearing during her younger years and,
4 because of the high rate of infant mortality at the time, giving birth and
5111 bringing up the children placed a very great burden on her (Kobayashi
6 1974: 75–84; Økado 1995: 67–69). It was therefore necessary for her to
7 have the support of one or two other women in the housework, who spent
8 any additional time available to them doing farm work.
9 As these examples show, the household economy was sustained both
30111 by women’s work (in the form of housework and farming) and the farm
1 work of the head of household and eldest son. If additional farm labor
2 was needed, younger sons might remain in the household; if not, they
3 were sent away to work (e.g. the third son of Household B, the second
4 son of Household C).
5 Table 3.4 presents data on the work performed by women in three
6 farm households in Ibaraki Prefecture in 1913, and in its breakdown of
7 housework reveals the importance of tasks related to clothing: the weaving
8 of cloth and the sewing and repair of garments. That was a consider-
9 able undertaking for women, given the large size of most farm house-
40111 holds at the time, and was typically carried out during the winter months.
1 It usually required the labor of two or three women during that season,
2111 and those women would then perform other housework and agricultural
42 Økado Masakatsu
Table 3.3 Allocation of tasks in four farm households in Niigata Prefecture, 1915

Household Family members Age Farm- House- Other

ing work
(days) (days) (days)
A
Cultivating landlord head of household 45 132 34 135
(owned 3.8 chø, wife of head 43 162 182 24
farmed 1.3 chø) eldest son 22 209 32 62
eldest son’s wife 18 111 106 6
eldest daughter 18 126 193 12
part-time employee 21 79 53

B
Owner-tenant head of household 46 277 12 17
(owned 0.9 chø, wife of head 42 96 148 20
farmed 2.1 chø) second son 18 307 21 14
third son1 16 2 3
third daughter2 12 8 11
fourth daughter2 9
fifth daughter 7

C
Owner farmer head of household 59 220 10 5
(owned 2.8 chø, wife of head 56 143 167 21
farmed 2.6 chø) mother of head3 69
eldest son 34 260 10 21
eldest son’s wife 30 192 127 2
second son4 28 38 1
third son 25 301 5 10
eldest daughter 18 189 145 6
3 young grandchildren
part-time employees 73 1

D
Owner farmer head of household 45 277 3 9
(owned 2.7 chø, wife of head 41 122 152 15
farmed 2.2 chø) eldest son 16 267 3 1
eldest daughter 19 203 157 1
second daughter2 13
third daughter 6
second son 3
Source: Niigata ken nøkai, Niigata ken nøka keizai chøsa, 1915.
Notes
1 started work in a shop in April.
2 elementary school student.
3 age as given in source, but must have been some 8 to 10 years older; did some house-
work from time to time.
4 helped with silkworm rearing only.
 Women of rural Japan 43
1111 Table 3.4 Work performed by women in three farm households in Ibaraki
2111 Prefecture, 1913 (in days or portions of days)
3 Status Age Agriculture Housework
4
5111 Farm Seri- Routine Clothes Sewing
6 work culture chores making lessons
7 A
8 wife of head 49 96 69 119 17
9 wife of adopted son 29 147 21 49 86
1011 second daughter 17 163 24 25 56 33
mother of head 75
1
2 B
3111 wife of head 42 95 107 85
4 wife of eldest son 22 113 61 66
5 mother of head 67
6
C
7 wife of head 42 128 51 75
8 eldest daughter 22 153 20 99
9 second daughter 17 134 24 119
20111 Source: Ibaraki ken nøkai, Nøka keizai chøsa, 1913.
1 Note
2 All four households were owner farmers, owning from 2.7 to 3 chø of land. Household A
3 had 9 members, of whom 3 were children; Household B, 10 members, of whom 3 were
children; Household C, 8 members, of whom 4 were children. Most of the farm work done
4 by women related to rice cultivation.
5111
6
7 tasks during the rest of the year (such as the silkworm breeding of the
8 wife and other women in Household A). Not surprisingly, daughters who
9 were expected to remain in the family were made to learn needlework
30111 (Household A’s second daughter), and the others were sent out to work
1 just like surplus sons, in the case of daughters as household servants or
2 factory workers.
3 As these examples show, women were deeply involved in both repro-
4 ductive and productive work within their families. Some housework tasks,
5 such as childcare and cooking, were performed daily, while others, such
6 as making and repairing clothing, were performed in the agricultural off-
7 season. The work load was distributed as ‘rationally’ as possible among
8 the two or three adult women present in most farm households, all of
9 whom devoted their spare time – that is, the time not needed for house-
40111 work – to farming.
1 The examples cited above are for the 1910s. Unfortunately, no similar
2111 material exists for the 1920s and 1930s, and so two examples from the
Table 3.5 Labor performed by family members, 1950 (䊊 = main tasks 䉭 = subsidiary tasks)

Member Age Agriculture Housework

Farm Seri- Cooking Clothing Cleaning Shopping Child Bath
work culture care fires
A
head 47 䊊 䊊
his wife 44 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊
his mother 64 䊊 䉭 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊
his brother 38 䉭 䉭 䉭
eldest son 21 䊊 䉭 䉭
second son 18
third son 14
fourth son 9
second daughter 11 䊊
third daughter 5

B
head 54 䊊 䊊
his wife 51 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊 䊊
eldest son 27 䉭 䉭 䊊
second son 21
third son 18 䉭 䉭 䊊
fourth daughter 13 䉭 䊊 䉭 䊊 䊊
fourth son 9 䉭
Source: Rødøshø fujin shønen kyoku, Nøson fujin no seikatsu, 1952.
Note
The second son of Household A was employed as an agricultural laborer. The eldest son in Household B was a company employee and the second
son was apprenticed to a shopkeeper.
 Women of rural Japan 45
1111 early 1950s will be introduced to show how, if at all, the role of women
2111 in farm households changed over time. Table 3.5 shows the labor per-
3 formed by family members in two farm households, one in northeastern
4 Japan (Household A in Yamagata Prefecture) and one in southwestern
5111 Japan (Household B in Aichi Prefecture). In both cases, the similarities
6 with the 1910s are clear, in that two women in each household were
7 needed to do the housework, devoting any spare time they had to farming.
8 In Household A, housework was done by the wife and her mother-in-
9 law, while in Household B, which did not include a mother-in-law,
1011 housework was performed by the wife and her 13-year-old fourth daughter
1 (a middle school student). In Household B both the eldest and second
2 son were employed elsewhere, and for this reason the wife shared farming
3111 and livestock rearing tasks with her husband, with help during the busy
4 season from the children who remained at home and were still in school,
5 the third and fourth son (in high school and elementary school, respec-
6 tively) and the fourth daughter (as noted above, in middle school). In
7 contrast, in Household A, where farm labor was provided by the head of
8 the household, his wife, his younger brother and their eldest son, it seems
9 that the primary and middle school children of the family helped only a
20111 little in the farm work and housework. This point may be considered a
1 new characteristic of the postwar period: now that attendance at middle
2 school had become compulsory (that is, now that nine years of schooling
3 were required, instead of six), it became increasingly difficult for farm
4 households to use children between the ages of 12 and 16 as an auxil-
5111 iary labor force in either farming or housework.
6
7
The era of the Showa Depression
8
9 If one examines the various bibliographies that are available on the subject
30111 of rural women, it is immediately obvious that almost no sources dating
1 from before the First World War are listed. Only in the 1920s did arti-
2 cles on rural women begin to appear in newspapers and magazines,
3 reflecting a growing awareness of the contrasts between countryside and
4 city in Japan at that time. The volume of such articles and other mater-
5 ials increased markedly in the aftermath of the Showa Depression, mostly
6 in connection with the on-going rural economic revitalization campaign.
7 Two themes stand out in the sources dating from the depression era as
8 far as rural women are concerned: (1) the problems facing young women
9 from the countryside who were at work in factories; and (2) the campaign
40111 for the improvement of daily life (seikatsu kaizen) in the countryside
1 itself. Only Maruoka Hideko, mentioned earlier, dealt with a third theme,
2111 the heavy workload of women in farm households. Apparently, such
46 Økado Masakatsu
heavy workloads were taken as perfectly normal by other observers, not
meriting any special attention.
What did attract the attention of these observers was the role women
were to play in rural economic revitalization. The campaign of that name
may have been based on the mobilization of ‘middling farmers’ – that
is, the adult men who as owner-cultivators or owner-tenants managed
their family’s farming operations – but it also sought to mobilize the
women and children in those families in the cause of self-help efforts to
rescue both their families and their communities from the devastating
effects of the depression (Økado, 1994: 306–8, 310–18).
To illustrate the role rural women were expected to play in the
campaign, I will use Yamagata Prefecture as an example. Two things
were expected from rural women in that prefecture, i.e. ‘the reform of
daily life in the home’ and ‘the promotion of education within the home.’
The first of these, ‘reform of daily life in the home’ consisted of the
following three objectives: (1) the improvement of food, clothing, and
shelter (better nutrition, suitable work clothes and children’s clothing,
improved cooking facilities), better management of hygiene and health
(establishment of a hygiene day, protection of expectant and nursing
mothers, greater attention to the care of infants and children), and reduced
expenditure on weddings and funerals; (2) the rationalization and reduc-
tion of household expenditure by means of the keeping of detailed
household accounts and making as many purchases as possible through
the local industrial cooperative; and (3) the improved performance of
communal tasks by better time management and the establishment of day
nurseries (Yamagata ken rengø jokyøin kyøgikai 1935: 48–68). As can
be seen, the home (katei) was here identified as a key institution in daily
life, consumption and the community, and women (fujin) were portrayed
as responsible for its proper management. Moreover, they were also
portrayed as responsible for ‘the promotion of education within the home,’
that is, for the traditional maternal task of teaching their children proper
behavior and, in addition, teaching them basic farming skills (Økado
1994: 317–19).
The magazine Nøson fujin (Rural Women) which was published
between 1932 and 1936, provides further insight into the roles envisaged
for rural women at the time of the rural economic revitalization campaign.
In the inaugural issue of March 1932 the editors stated:

The desire for modern luxuries has finally spread to the countryside,
and we note with extreme regret that some women have even fled
their rural homes [in the hope of bettering their lives]. . . . But if all
rural women awaken to their economic, occupational and familial
 Women of rural Japan 47
1111 roles in agriculture, we can expect prosperity to return to the rural
2111 villages of our country.
3
4 What was needed, the editors continued, were efforts to create ‘a pious
5111 rural culture, in contrast to the decadent culture of the city.’ Women were
6 thus expected to contribute to rural recovery in three spheres: the
7 ‘economic,’ the ‘occupational’ and the ‘familial.’
8 About the articles that appeared in this and subsequent issues of the
9 magazine, the following five observations can be made. First, rural women
1011 were identified as the persons in charge of the reform of daily life, as
1 family managers and as educators of children. As a reflection of this there
2 were many articles relating to meal planning, kitchen improvements, more
3111 ‘rational’ expenditure on family weddings and funerals, child-rearing and
4 education. Second, there were numerous articles on the activities of groups
5 such as industrial cooperatives, young women’s associations and house-
6 wives’ associations, all emphasizing the importance of collective action
7 in solving rural problems. Third, there were relatively few articles on
8 farming itself and quite a few articles on vegetable gardening and such
9 by-employments as poultry raising, horticulture, rope making and other
20111 uses of leftover straw, with rural women encouraged to take the lead in
1 such activities. Fourth, there were regular articles introducing readers to
2 rural women in other countries, for example in Denmark, Korea, the
3 United States and Russia. Fifth, each issue of the magazine invariably
4 contained articles explaining the goals of the rural economic revitaliza-
5111 tion campaign and exhorting readers to strive for their achievement.
6 On the basis of the above observations about the content of articles in
7 Nøson fujin, it can be said that the magazine located rural women outside
8 of farming itself, stressing their role in the operation of by-employments
9 and portraying them as the managers of the home and improvements to
30111 daily life. And those latter improvements were generally confined to
1 simple techniques and technologies, with essentially no mention made of
2 such problems as patriarchy, primogeniture or overwork. That said, it did
3 mark a new departure that the ‘home’ (katei) was identified as a distinct
4 domain within family farming operations and women were given a respon-
5 sible position within that domain. Where previously farm households had
6 tended to subordinate how they lived to the needs of their farming activ-
7 ities, now for the first time the importance of the domestic domain was
8 acknowledged. Despite that acknowledgment, however, it is important to
9 remember that the rural economic revitalization campaign stressed collec-
40111 tive action by such organizations as youth groups, women’s associations
1 and industrial cooperatives to bring about improvements in that domain.
2111 In that sense, the campaign drew rural women out of their dwellings and
48 Økado Masakatsu
gave them a role in their communities, but it did not intervene in any
way to help them as individuals or to encourage changes in the situation
of women within family farming.

Women in wartime Japan

It was only during the wartime period that the role of women in farm
operations began to attract attention, especially from those involved in
the design and execution of wartime economic controls. Now that rural
men were being drawn away for military service and factory work, it was
clear that the agricultural labor force was becoming increasingly femin-
ized (Økado and Yanagizawa 1996: 34–6).
Table 3.6, which is derived from census and other data, shows changes
in the employed population by industry and by gender during the years
1936 to 1940 (the time of the Sino-Japanese War) and 1940 to 1944 (the
time of the Asian-Pacific War). The last three columns show the increase
or decrease of those so employed in each period, providing an indication
of the major sources of military manpower and labor in heavy industry
at the time. At the time of the Sino-Japanese War, those major sources
were males from agriculture and forestry and from commerce and males
and females from the textile industry. From the outbreak of the Asian-
Pacific War, the major sources were males and females from commerce,
males from agriculture and forestry and males and females from the textile
industry. What should be noted here is that the number of females in
agriculture and forestry increased in both periods. It is clear that labor
shortages in that sector were being compensated for, at least to a con-
siderable extent, by females throughout the Sino-Japanese and the
Asian-Pacific Wars.
In that connection, it would be relevant to compare the reliance on
foreign and prisoner-of-war labor in both wartime Germany and Japan.
On the one hand, in 1944 the proportion of foreign workers and pris-
oners of war in the total German labor force reached 20 percent. On the
other hand, in that same year the proportion of Korean and Chinese
workers in the total Japanese labor force has been estimated at only
4 percent (Yamazaki 1993: 196–7). Koreans and Chinese were certainly
subjected to a severe forced labor regime in wartime Japan (as were a
comparatively small number of western prisoners of war), but viewed in
terms of the degree of dependence on that form of labor, there was clearly
a striking difference between Germany and Japan. I believe that a major
reason for this difference rests with the nature of family farming in Japan
and the role of women within farm households. That is, wartime mobili-
zation in Japan drew heavily on the manpower from the many farm
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
4
3
2
1
9
8
7
6
5
4
2
1
9
8
7
6
4
3

2111
5111
3111
1011
5111
2111
1111

40111
30111
20111
Table 3.6 Changes in the employed population by industry and gender, 1936–47

October 1, October 1, October 1, February 22, October 1, Variation

1936 1940* 1940** 1944 1947
1936–40 1940–44 1944–47
Male employees
agricultural and forestry 7,814 6,618 6,626 5,787 8,431 –1,196 –839 2,644
machine industry 789 1,897 1,870 3,524 971 1,108 1,654 –2,553
textile industry 869 689 583 239 409 –180 –344 170
commerce 3,072 2,652 2,464 879 1,497 –420 –1,585 618
restaurants, etc. 530 395 552 279 349 –135 –273 70

Female employees
agriculture and forestry 6,714 7,223 7,223 7,784 8,671 509 561 887
machine industry 33 227 225 787 148 194 562 –639
textile industry 1,263 1,122 1,044 570 641 –141 –474 71
commerce 857 1,193 1,119 684 693 336 –435 9
restaurants, etc. 951 742 811 573 389 –209 –238 –184

All employees
agriculture and forestry 14,528 13,842 13,850 13,571 17,102 –686 –279 3,531
machine industry 822 2,123 2,095 4,312 1,120 1,301 2,217 –3,192
textile industry 2,132 1,811 1,626 809 1,050 –321 –817 241
commerce 3,929 3,845 3,583 1,555 2,190 –84 –2,028 635
restaurants, etc. 1,480 1,137 1,363 852 738 –342 –511 –114
Source: Umemura Mataji et al., Chøki keizai tøkei 2: rødøryoku (Tokyo: Tøyø keizai shinpøsha, 1988), pp. 208–15, 260–1.
Notes: *1940 census data
**1940 census data as re-calculated on the bases used in the extraordinary censuses of 1944 and 1947
50 Økado Masakatsu
households throughout the country, and ‘womanpower’ in those same
households to a great extent filled the gap that their departure for the
front or factory left.
In fact, the feminization of the agricultural workforce progressed
conspicuously during the wartime period. While the number of males
aged 20 to 39 in that workforce decreased from 2.91 million in 1930 to
2.13 million in 1940 and to only 1.5 million in 1944, the number of
females in that same age group increased from 2.81 million in 1930 to
3.02 million in 1940, and again to 3.36 million between 1940 and 1944.
As a result, the percentage of women in the agricultural workforce rose
from 49.1 percent in 1930 to 58.7 percent in 1940 and to 69.1 percent
in 1944. On the eve of Japan’s defeat and surrender, roughly 70 percent
of all labor in agriculture was provided by women (Øhara shakai mondai
kenky¨jo 1964: 181).
Thus, wartime mobilization depended heavily on farm households, and
the fact that women were already involved in farming and capable of
even deeper involvement was a fundamental factor in making possible
the mobilization of men from those households. Herein lies the reason
why rural women were given increased attention during the war years.
A lot was expected from rural women during those years, both in
farming and in fecundity. Because they were supposed to take over much
of the agricultural work in place of the young men who had been mobi-
lized for the war and war-related work, they were taught farming
techniques – for example, how to dig fields with an ox-drawn plow and
how to cope with shortages of fertilizer and other essentials (Niigata ken
nøkai 1942). The training given to such women at this time no doubt had
something to do with the emergence of ‘housewife farming’ (shufu nøgyø)
in the postwar period, as many wives had the necessary skills to tend the
crops while their husbands went off to perform non-agricultural work.
At the same time, rural women were expected to give birth to as many
babies as possible during the war years, to replenish and augment the
nation’s population, and this led to a variety of health problems, espe-
cially related to childbirth and infant care, as well as problems related to
housing.
These two expectations placed a great strain on many women.
According to one source, for example, infant mortality rates in Tohoku
in the early 1940s were the highest not among the poorest farm families,
but among those of middling economic status, and the major cause of
mortality was not malnutrition but maternal exhaustion from overwork
and the poor condition of even ‘middle-class’ rural dwellings (Itaya 1942:
151–2, 295). Nor did women gain any higher status within their families
for taking the place of absent males and becoming responsible for farming
 Women of rural Japan 51
1111 as well as housework. They may have sustained the family’s farming
2111 operations, but as before males remained the principle successors to family
3 property. Women were not recognized as the mainstays of family farming,
4 but regarded as mere caretakers while the ‘proper’ head of the family or
5111 male heir to the family’s landholding was away.
6 None of these problems was addressed during the war years. Granted,
7 there were surveys carried out by the Institute for the Science of Labor,
8 which carried forward the previously mentioned research of Maruoka
9 Hideko to portray the role of rural women in all of its dimensions,
1011 including agricultural labor as well as housework and by-employments,
1 and which highlighted the problems caused by overwork and the state’s
2 pro-natal policies during wartime (Rødø kagaku kenky¨jo 1933–42). In
3111 a different way, Ie no hikari continued to highlight the need for the
4 improvement of daily life in the countryside and the aspiration of rural
5 women to achieve progress in that. It may well be that the editors of that
6 magazine were aware of the Institute’s findings and hoped for policy
7 initiatives on a much wider front, but the financial and other demands of
8 waging war rendered that impossible.
9
20111
From the Occupation through the 1950s
1
2 The ‘liberation of women’ was put forward as an essential part of the
3 democratization sought by the Occupation in early postwar Japan. In
4 September 1947 the Women’s and Minors’ Bureau (Fujin shønen kyoku)
5111 was created in the Ministry of Labor, and women and minors’ offices
6 (fujin shønen shitsu) were established in every prefecture. In addition, in
7 November 1948 the Home-Life Improvement Section was established
8 in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and agents were dispatched
9 to the countryside to promote improvement projects, many of which
30111 had a bearing on ‘women’s liberation.’ Thereafter, in the wake of the
1 democratization effected by the new constitution and revision of the civil
2 code, and as a result of continued American influence and concern about
3 the gap in living standards between rural and urban Japan, many surveys
4 on the labor and lives of rural woman were carried out. Indeed, the over-
5 work experienced by rural women was a major theme in the literature
6 published at this time, along with the more familiar themes of the need
7 for improvements in housework and daily life. One notable example of
8 this was The Lives of Rural Women (Nøson fujin no seikatsu), published
9 by the Women’s and Minors’ Bureau in the Ministry of Labor in 1952.
40111 This marked the first time an official government agency had published
1 material on the heavy workload of rural women, and, moreover, in
2111 attributing the causes of that heavy workload to the privileged positions
52 Økado Masakatsu

Plate 3.1 A bountiful rice harvest in Niigata, 1954. Reproduced from ‘Shashin
ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi’ kankøkai, ed., Shashin ga kataru Shøwa
nøgyøshi (Tokyo: Fumin kyøkai, 1987), p. 75.

of the male patriarchs of farm families and their wives (the mothers-in-
law of the brides of eldest sons), it clearly reflected early postwar concerns
with the democratization of Japanese society.
But in reality efforts to tackle the problems facing rural women even
in the postwar period ended up being confined to the improvement of
daily life. On the assumption that men were responsible for the manage-
ment of farming and family property, including issues of succession and
inheritance, women were placed in charge of the family home (Ichida
1995). Under the strong influence of contemporary American thinking
about rural policies, that meant that women were responsible for such
things as the rationalization of housework, beginning with improvements
to kitchens, and other efforts to make the home safer and more comfort-
able for family members. As already mentioned, the campaign for the
improvement of daily life can be traced back to the prewar period, but
 Women of rural Japan 53
1111 it is probably correct to say that it did not get started in earnest until after
2111 the Second World War.
3 For rural women, who had to perform heavy labor in both farming
4 and housework, such issues as simplifying food preparation tasks by
5111 means of kitchen reform were of pressing concern, but it also seems that
6 many rural women aspired to the status that at least some of their urban
7 counterparts had already achieved as ‘professional housewives.’
8 Consequently, the campaign to improve daily life in the rural areas of
9 early postwar Japan was implemented not simply because the Ministry
1011 of Agriculture and Forestry had made it policy, but also because rural
1 women themselves enthusiastically embraced and carried forward its
2 objectives. During these years, the zeal for admittedly much-needed
3111 improvements to the daily life and living standards of farm families
4 deflected attention from the other problems facing rural women.
5
6
Rural women since the 1960s
7
8 In the concluding section of what is, of necessity, a brief overview, I will
9 begin with a summary of the discussion so far and then make some obser-
20111 vations about rural women in Japan since the 1960s.
1 As has been made clear, rural women were largely ignored until after
2 the First World War, and it was not until the launch of the rural economic
3 revitalization campaign in the aftermath of the Showa Depression that
4 much attention was paid to them. The emphasis then, however, was on
5111 their newly defined role as managers of the home and of improvements
6 to daily life. So great was the gap between that externally defined role,
7 however, and the lives that most rural women actually led, that very little
8 was accomplished in the way of tangible improvements to daily life at
9 the time. What was achieved, largely on account of the activities of local
30111 industrial cooperatives, youth groups and women’s associations, was the
1 placing of the issue of such improvements on the agenda of most rural
2 communities, and that in turn helped lay the basis for renewed attempts
3 at a similar range of improvements in the postwar era.
4 During the war years, women became more heavily involved than ever
5 before in farming, as they stepped in to replace the labor of the men who
6 had been called up for military service or recruited for essential factory
7 work. Only the Institute for the Science of Labor took note of the over-
8 work from which many of them suffered, however. As before, magazines
9 such as Nøson fujin and Ie no hikari continued to stress the role of rural
40111 women as managers of the home and agents of improvement to daily life.
1 It finally seemed that action would be taken to improve the lot of rural
2111 women in the early postwar years, when for the first time government
Plate 3.2 Woman at work with a pitchfork, Ibaraki, 1961. Reproduced from
Shashin ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi, p. 113.
 Women of rural Japan 55
1111 officials acknowledged the heavy burden of work women shouldered and
2111 attributed that burden to the way in which farm households themselves
3 were structured. As the report published by the Women’s and Minors’
4 Bureau made clear, only by the democratization of those households
5111 would that burden be eased. Despite some progress on that front, however,
6 most farm families maintained the long-standing practice of succession
7 by the first-born son, and so far as government officials were concerned,
8 the main role played by rural women was as manager of the family home.
9 This situation did not change in any fundamental way even after the start
1011 of the High Growth Era in the late 1950s, when male labor was siphoned
1 away from the countryside to non-agricultural employment, leaving
2 rural women with even more farm work to do. As was pointed out in the
3111 introduction, it was only in the 1990s that scholars and officials noticed
4 how much farm work rural women were actually performing. Their
5 important role in family farming as well as in farm families, although a
6 continuing feature of their lives throughout the twentieth century, had
7 finally become visible.
8 A recent international survey of the attitudes and situation of rural
9 women in four countries including Japan highlights the problems that
20111 Japan’s rural women face at present, suggesting some of the policy initia-
1 tives and the research topics that might well be pursued in future.
2 The survey was conducted by the Ie no Hikari Association in 1998
3 among rural women in the United States, France, Thailand and Japan
4 (Ie no hikari kyøkai 1999a and 1999b). One of the most significant features
5111 of this survey is that it includes not only such fairly concrete issues as
6 property and management rights, but also such otherwise elusive issues
7 as the extent to which women are ‘entrusted’ with certain tasks, how
8 rural women themselves assess farming, and how they think about their
9 lives (ikigai). Both the nature of the questions asked and the diverging
30111 results from country to country bring the current situation of rural women
1 in Japan into clear relief.
2 Figure 3.1 shows the responses by country to statements about the
3 merit of taking part in farming. So to speak, this becomes the self-appraisal
4 of rural women engaged in agriculture. What is clear from just one glance
5 is that among the four countries Japanese women had the lowest
6 percentage of respondents saying that there is merit in being engaged in
7 farming. The questionnaire items included many different aspects, but
8 the self-appraisal by the Japanese rural women is low in almost all items.
9 If we look at the four countries together, respondents in Thailand had
40111 the highest level of self-appraisal and the most pride in being part of
1 agriculture, followed by the United States, then by France, and finally
2111 by Japan.
56 Økado Masakatsu

JAPAN USA FRANCE THAILAND

100%
90
80 FARMING
70
SEEN AS
HAVING
60 MERIT
50

40 FARMING
30 SEEN AS
LACKING
20 MERIT

10

unity
bers
ure

ke ti nt
ff
lity
s
n
s
ing
ople

ciety

es
able
urs
me
ies
nt
y

stres

e
ildre
me o
ibilit

biliti

valu
yme

n cit
Easy mplishm

g ho
inco
y nat

erest
igina
mem

avail
of pe

ng so
omm
ng ch
onal
pons
mplo

my a

ciety

han i
orkin
is int

high
ded b

w or

idies
mily

iety

servi
cal c
moti
to ta
n res

raisi
f une
acco

rk so

her t
d to

lar w
o sho

rn a
itself
roun

e var
th fa

subs
he lo
No e

e of
y ow

Suite
l for

s hig
g wo
ear o

to ea
e of

Regu
g sur

ces t

a wid
g wi

work

State
Sens
ing t
Idea
ng m

Sens

statu
Doin
No f

Able
Chan
Bein
in

Serv
ting
The
Work

Havi

en’s
Mee

Wom

Figure 3.1 How rural women evaluate farming: an international comparison of

Japan, France, the United States and Thailand.
Note
In the original survey rural women were asked to select one of the following responses to
each of the 19 statements: (1) completely agree; (2) agree to an extent; (3) disagree to an
extent; and (4) completely disagree. The above figure presents the percentages of those
agreeing with each statement (responses 1 and 2). The statements themselves are arranged
in descending order of agreement by rural women in Japan.
Source: Ie no hikari kyøkai, Nøson josei no ishiki to jittai ni kansuru kokusai hikaku chøsa
høkokusho, 1999.

If we look at Japan in more detail, to only five of the 19 statements

in Figure 3.1 did the level of assessment of merit reach more than 50
percent, and to many statements the assessment level remained between
10 and 30 percent. Japan in particular differs from the other countries by
having low assessment levels on statements related to the pride in and
appeal of farming, e.g. ‘work that society values,’ ‘suited to one’s own
abilities,’ and ‘the work itself is interesting.’ In contrast, statements where
there is no major difference between Japan and the other countries
included ‘no fear about unemployment’ and ‘no emotional stress.’ With
the progressive aging of Japan’s agricultural labor force, some commen-
 Women of rural Japan 57
1111 tators and policymakers have suggested that even more rural women might
2111 now be expected to take up farming. However, the fairly positive image
3 of rural women in agriculture on which this suggestion is based and the
4 image of rural women that emerges from this questionnaire survey are
5111 rather different. From the survey we learn that many rural women do not
6 have much interest in farming itself or take much pride in the farm work
7 they do.
8 And why do Japanese rural women not feel positively attracted to farm-
9 ing? Figure 3.2 shows the responses related to the ownership of different
1011 kinds of assets, and reveals that a fairly high percentage of rural women
1 in other countries have gained title to the family home and land, which is
2 in contrast to Japan, where only a low percentage of respondents hold title
3111
4
Self Husband Child Father Mother Do not own
5
6 100% 100% 100% 100%

7 80 80 80 80

8 60 60 60 60

9 HOUSE
40 40 40 40

20111 20 20 20 20

1 0 0 0 0

2 100% 100% 100% 100%

3 80 80 80 80

4 HOUSING 60 60 60 60
PLOT
5111 40 40 40 40

6 20 20 20 20

7 0 0 0 0
100% 100% 100% 100%
8
80 80 80 80
9
60 60 60
30111 FIELDS
60

40 40 40
1 40

2 20 20 20 20

0 0 0 0
3
100% 100% 100% 100%
4
80 80 80 80
5
SAVINGS 60 60 60 60
6 ACCOUNTS
40 40 40 40
7
20 20 20 20
8
0 0 0 0
9 JAPAN USA FRANCE THAILAND
40111
1 Figure 3.2 Ownership of assets within the family.
2111 Source: as in Figure 3.1.
58 Økado Masakatsu
to such property. In the case of Japanese farm families, not only is it often
the husband who owns the farmhouse and land, but cases where title to
both remains in the name of the father even after a successor son’s mar-
riage are also still numerous. The only property that is in the name of
Japan’s rural women is savings accounts. It is perhaps only natural that
rural women are not attracted to or have no pride in agriculture, when they
are excluded from the ownership of farmhouses and land.
In addition, another interesting finding of the survey concerns the
degree to which rural women are entrusted with tasks relating to farming
and the daily life of the household (Figure 3.3). With regard to farming
management and agricultural techniques men play the leading role not
only in Japan but also in the United States and France, and rural women
feel that they are only entrusted with a low degree of responsibility. But
Japan differs considerably from the other countries on the issues of
domestic life and the upbringing of children. In contrast to the high
proportion of rural women in the United States, France and Thailand who
feel that they are ‘entrusted with responsibility’ for the domestic house-
hold and upbringing of the children, only a low percentage of Japanese
women report this feeling. In short, many rural women in Japan feel that
they are neither entrusted with responsibility for farm work nor entrusted
with responsibility in the home.
The latter finding is particularly interesting, given the emphasis since
the 1920s on rural women in Japan as managers of the home. They may
have done most of the housework, but further research will be needed to
uncover precisely how the work has been delegated, and by whom, within

JAPAN USA FRANCE THAILAND

100% 100% 100% 100%

80 80 80 80

60 60 60 60

40 40 40 40

20 20 20 20

0 0 0 0
ild ion
t

fe
Fa ogy
ldr on
ild ion

t
t

fe
fe

ldr on

Fa ogy
gy

nt

fe

en
Fa logy

en
en

Li

ren
Li
Li

rm geme

Li

en
ren

i
en
i
olo

em

Ch cat
em
em

Ch cat
Ch cat

Ch cat

l
l

no
Ca mily
no
no

Ca mily
ly

Ca mily

of Edu
ag
hn

of Edu
of du

ag
ag

of Edu

ch
mi

ch
ch

i
a

an
c

an
an

an

Te
Fa

Te
Te

Te

&
M
&
&

M
M

&
M

rm
rm
rm

re
re
re

rm
re

rm
rm

rm

Fa
Ca

Fa
Fa

Fa

Fa
Fa
Fa

Fa

Entrusted with responsibility Entrusted to a degree

Figure 3.3 Degree of responsibility in farming and home for rural women.
Source: as in Figure 3.1.
 Women of rural Japan 59
1111 farm households. Moreover, the exclusion of rural women from the
2111 ownership of family assets – that is, from inheritance of the family’s land
3 – will have to be addressed if in future women are to play a greater role
4 in Japanese agriculture.
5111
6
References
7
8 Ichida Tomoko. 1995. ‘Seikatsu kaizen fuky¨ jigyø no rinen to tenkai.’ Nøgyø
9 søgø kenky¨ 49(2).
1011 Ie no hikari kyøkai. 1999a. Nøson josei no ishiki to jittai ni kansuru kokusai hikaku
1 chøsa høkokusho. Tokyo: Ie no hikari kyøkai.
–––– 1999b. Nøson josei ni miru okunigara no chigai.
2
Imamura Naraomi. 1995. ‘Nøgyø no shinjin kakumei jidai.’ Nøgyø to keizai,
3111
January.
4 Itagaki Kuniko. 1992. Shøwa senzen, sench¨ki no nøson seikatsu. Tokyo: Sanrei
5 shobø.
6 Itaya Eisei. 1942. Tøhoku nøson ki. Tokyo: Tøkyø daidø shokan.
7 Kobayashi Hatsue. 1974. Onna sandai. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha.
8 Kumagai Sonoko. 1995. ‘Kazoku nøgyø keiei ni okeru jøsei rødø no yakuwari
9 hyøka to sono igi.’ In Kazoku nøgyø keiei ni okeru josei no jiritsu, ed. Nihon
20111 sonraku kenky¨ gakkai. Tokyo: Nøsangyoson bunka kyøkai.
1 Maruoka Hideko. 1937; reprinted 1980. Nihon nøson fujin mondai. Tokyo: Køyø
2 shoin; Domesu shuppan.
3 Niigata ken nøkai. 1942. Joshi nøsakugyø kenky¨kai yøkø.
Nishida Yoshiaki. 1997. Kindai Nihon nømin undøshi kenky¨. Tokyo: Tøkyø
4
daigaku shuppankai.
5111 Øhara shakai mondai kenky¨jo. 1964. Taiheiyø sensøka no rødøsha jøtai. Tokyo:
6 Tøyø keizai shinpøsha.
7 Økado Masakatsu. 1994. Kindai Nihon to nøson shakai. Tokyo: Nihon keizai
8 hyøronsha.
9 –––– 1995. ‘Nømin no seikatsu no henka.’ In Køza sekaishi, 4. Tokyo: Tøkyø
30111 daigaku shuppankai.
1 –––– and Yanagizawa Asobu. 1996. ‘Senji rødøryoku no ky¨gen to døin: nømin
2 kazoku to toshi shøkøgyøsha o taishø ni.’ Tochi seido shigaku, 151.
3 Rødø kagaku kenky¨jo. 1933–42. Nøgyø rødø chøsasho høkoku, 1–59.
4 Saitø Osamu. 1991. ‘Nøgyø hatten to josei rødø.’ Hitotsubashi dakigaku keizai
kenky¨jo keizai kenky¨, 42(1).
5
–––– 1998. Chingin to rødø to seikatsu suijun. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
6
Tanimoto Masayuki. 1998. Nihon ni okeru zairaiteki keizai hatten to orimonogyø.
7 Nagoya: Nagoya daigaku shuppankai.
8 Yamagata ken rengø jokyøin kyøgikai. 1935. Joshi kyøin no shakaiteki katsudø.
9 Yamazaki Hiroaki. 1993. ‘Nihon no sensø keizai.’ In Rekishi to Identity, ed.
40111 Yamaguchi Yasushi and Ronald Ruprecht. Tokyo: Shibunkaku.
1
2111
4 The impact of the local
improvement movement on
farmers and rural communities
Tsutsui Masao

Introduction
Victorious in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5, Japan expanded its
colonial empire and reveled in its newly achieved status as one of the
five great powers of the world. The industrial revolution that had begun
in the early Meiji era appeared to be nearing success. But the Japanese
people remained burdened with the increased taxes that had been levied
during the war so that the foreign loans made to help finance the conflict
could be repaid and the expenditure on industrial, transport and social
infrastructure that had been suspended during the conflict could be
resumed. Meeting that tax burden caused hardship in the Japanese coun-
tryside and led to financial and administrative paralysis in many rural
communities, as well as to greater tensions between landlords and tenant
farmers. It was at this time that the Japanese government announced the
local improvement movement (chihø kairyø undø) to effect widespread
change in provincial (especially rural) Japan and create a local popula-
tion willing and able to support the needs of the emerging Japanese
Empire.
The movement was launched during the second Katsura government
(July 14, 1908–August 30, 1911) and directed by the Home Ministry,
with support from both the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce and
the Ministry of Education. Its main areas of concern were: (1) strength-
ening the financial and administrative base of towns and villages by such
measures as the transfer of hamlet property to the larger administrative
villages of which they were a part, establishing local councils (jichikai)
to assist in administration and, with the 1911 local government reform,
the granting of greater powers to town and village mayors; (2) expanding
the economic base of villages by means of greater reliance on agricul-
tural associations and industrial cooperatives; (3) promoting the values
of diligence, frugality and united action among people of all social classes
 The local improvement movement 61
1111 as set forth in the Boshin Rescript of 1908 and further promoting unity
2111 under the emperor by merging local shrines into a nationwide hierarchy
3 of State Shinto shrines; (4) encouraging patriotism and loyalty to the
4 emperor in the classrooms of elementary schools and in the activities of
5111 youth groups and military reservists’ associations; and (5) by such means
6 as the selection of ‘model villages’ and training courses, creating enthu-
7 siasm for local improvement and nurturing local leaders in towns and
8 villages who would carry the movement forward. It was thus a multi-
9 faceted undertaking, involving local government, the economy, society,
1011 education and ideology.
1 Not a little scholarly controversy surrounds the interpretation of the
2 local improvement movement. To Ishida Takeshi (1956), Øshima Mitsuko
3111 (1970) and others of the school of political history inspired by Maruyama
4 Masao, for example, the movement was an attempt to shore up the under-
5 pinnings of an imperial state unsettled by the Russo-Japanese War by
6 revamping and revivifying the traditional – and inherently anti-modern –
7 hamlet solidarities of rural Japan. In contrast, Miyaji Masato (1973) has
8 argued that those traditional hamlets were to be subordinated to the larger
9 administrative units of which they nominally were part, and the latter
20111 would be strengthened as the ‘financial and manpower base’ of imperial
1 Japan. Given the political focus of these scholars, very little attention is
2 paid in their work to the bearing of the local improvement movement on
3 rural society itself, or its effects on the commercialization of agriculture
4 and landlord–tenant relations. Nor do they pay much attention even to
5111 local politics and the on-going activities of political parties to gain support
6 in the regions and rural areas of Japan (Ariizumi 1976: 247–55). On the
7 contrary, the political literature tends to revolve around a rather simplistic
8 either/or proposition – either the hamlet solidarity was strengthened or
9 the administrative village was strengthened – and to be concerned
30111 primarily with the character of the imperial Japanese state.
1 There has been similar controversy among economic historians over
2 whether the agricultural economy was in crisis after the Russo-Japanese
3 War (Takahashi 1926) or whether the commercialization of agriculture
4 was proceeding apace, albeit it not entirely without problems (Kurihara
5 1949) and, in the decades after the Second World War, on the relevance
6 of economic developments in the agricultural sector after the Russo-
7 Japanese War on class relations in the countryside – especially landlord–
8 tenant relations – and tenancy disputes in the 1920s (Teruoka 1970:
9 chapter 3). With the benefit of hindsight, the latter certainly was an import-
40111 ant issue, but at the time – that is, in the early 1900s – the central problems
1 facing Japanese villages were those very much on the agenda of the local
2111 improvement movement: elementary education, hamlet common lands,
62 Tsutsui Masao
the burden of taxation and other public charges, and discontent with local
financial administration (Aoki 1967: 159; Senoue 1985). Tenancy disputes
were still very rare. Moreover, the very commercialization of agriculture
that has attracted so much attention was not unaffected by the high taxa-
tion that constituted rural residents’ main complaint about local financial
policy. Thus it can be said that economic historians, too, have tended to
ignore some of the key features of the local improvement movement.
In this chapter I will attempt to present a suitably comprehensive
account of the local improvement movement in all of its aspects in one
rural district of Japan. Moreover, I will also discuss the hitherto rather
neglected topics of the penetration of emperor-centered nationalism into
the Japanese countryside and the realization of a substantially new local
power structure in the Japanese countryside.
The district on which I will focus is the northern portion of Sunto
county (gun) in Shizuoka Prefecture, usually abbreviated as Hokusun and
now part of the city of Gotenba and the nearby town of Oyama. Hamlets
in the district each owned tracts of forested land, either at the foot of
Mt Fuji or in the vicinity of Mt Hakone. There were a few large land-
lords with holdings of about 30 hectares each and numerous cultivating
landlords and substantial owner-cultivators with holdings of five to ten
hectares each. A stretch of the Tokaido Railway Line (now the Gotenba
Line) had opened to traffic in the district in 1889, the Fuji Spinning
Company had opened a large, modern cotton mill in Oyama in the mid-
1890s, and local farming had become steadily more commercialized
thereafter. All in all, the district is well suited as a case study of the
nature and impact of the local improvement movement.

The reform of elementary education

In the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War the Japanese government
took steps to expand the elementary education system that had been
initiated in the 1870s and to insure that appropriate values were taught
to all children. Tuition fees at the elementary level had been abolished
(in principle, at least) in 1900, and in 1907 the number of years of
schooling required was increased from four years to five and then six.
During the local improvement movement, all towns and villages were
encouraged to reach the six-year target and to take steps to insure enroll-
ment and regular attendance by all local children, including girls. As a
result, the overall enrollment and attendance rates reached 95 percent or
more in the 1910s.
The issuance of the Boshin Rescript in 1908 gave impetus to the incor-
poration of imperial ideology into the elementary school curriculum, as
 The local improvement movement 63
1111 well as into local society itself. For example, in Shizuoka Prefecture the
2111 Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 was thereafter taught to pupils
3 in years 1 to 4, and the Boshin Rescript was taught to those in added
4 years 5 and 6. Moreover, it became compulsory to give both rescripts a
5111 respectful formal reading at the local elementary school on such public
6 occasions as Army Day, Navy Day, the anniversaries of Japan’s victories
7 in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, the anniversary of Em-
8 peror Jimmu’s accession and the annual celebration of entrance to
9 elementary school itself. Readings were also encouraged at major cere-
1011 monies at local Shinto shrines and during the late summer Buddhist bon
1 festival for the dead.
2 However useful to the state in inculcating such virtues as frugality,
3111 diligence and social harmony in young minds, or indeed in promoting
4 basic literacy and numeracy among the young, the expansion of ele-
5 mentary education posed great problems for the towns and villages of
6 Japan. In the first place, it was municipalities such as these (as well as
7 cities) that were expected to pay for the additional classrooms, teachers
8 and playgrounds needed to achieve first five-, then six-year elementary
9 education provision. That constituted a considerable financial burden and
20111 necessitated increases in local household tax levies. Faced with that addi-
1 tional expenditure, the landlord who headed Harazato village raised the
2 household tax levy paid by those with the lowest incomes in the village,
3 on the one hand, and joined with other local landlords in raising the rents
4 they charged their tenants, on the other, thereby shifting the increased
5111 burden away from themselves (Tsutsui 1984: 20–2).
6 Second, the need to provide additional classroom space led to proposals
7 in many villages to consolidate the smaller schools that had been built
8 earlier in various hamlets into one, centrally located school as a means
9 of saving money in the longer term, and those proposals immediately led
30111 to controversy about precisely where in the village the new school should
1 be located and intense rivalry among the constituent hamlets of the villages
2 concerned that would continue for years (Tsutsui 1999a: 236–43). A
3 contributing factor in that inter-hamlet rivalry was the effect of railway
4 and industrial development in the district since the late 1890s, which had
5 already benefited some hamlets more than others.
6
7
Hamlet common lands
8
9 The transfer of hamlet-owned forests and fields to administrative villages
40111 was also one of the policies vigorously pursued during the local im-
1 provement movement, partly as a means of bolstering village finances
2111 (and weakening hamlet autonomy), but primarily in order to protect the
64 Tsutsui Masao
timber and other natural resources on such common lands from over-
exploitation.
During the earlier Tokugawa period, the common lands which played
such a vital role in subsistence agriculture had been infused with reli-
gious significance by local farmers, and hamlet rules had governed both
access to and use of the precious resources they contained. Other substan-
tial tracts of forested land were managed by the Tokugawa shogunate
and domain rulers (the daimyo), and access even more severely restricted.
This changed with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, however, as Japan’s
incipient industrial revolution generated greatly increased demand for
railway sleepers, timber for the construction of factories and other new
buildings, wood and charcoal for fuel and scrap wood for matches.
Moreover, the land tax reform implemented during the 1870s, which made
newly recognized land owners responsible for paying taxes in cash not
kind, spurred the commercialization of agriculture and the development
of by-employments to earn cash incomes throughout rural Japan. As a
result, farmers began cutting ever more grasses for green manure for their
fields and taking ever more twigs and other raw materials needed for
handicraft production from local common lands. Hamlet regulations about
the use of those common lands were increasingly relaxed or simply
ignored as farmers competed for the resources they provided (Tsutsui
1984: 23–4, 1993: 243, 1999b: 341–5). Traditional nature worship ceased
to structure the daily lives of farmers to the same degree as in the past,
and gradually a new deity – the emperor – began to figure more promi-
nently in their thoughts (Miyamoto 1960: 3). Nowhere was this more
apparent than in the leading by-employment among farmers in the Meiji
era, the rearing of silkworms. As they were told by the speakers who
toured the countryside promoting sericulture, the silk thread produced
from the cocoons farmers supplied earned the foreign exchange Japan
needed to pay for imports of weapons of war and industrial technology,
and therefore all those who reared silkworms were performing service to
the emperor and the empire (Tsutsui 1984: 27).
Shortly after the Russo-Japanese War, officials in Tokyo were warning
of the impending deforestation of much of Japan. Severe flooding had
been reported throughout the country since the late 1880s, as denuded
mountains and hillsides could no longer absorb spill-off from heavy rains,
and local residents were becoming increasingly alarmed about the threat
of water-borne diseases (Tsutsui 1993: 243, 1998: 99–107).
Because official efforts since the late 1880s to regulate the exploita-
tion of forests and promote conservation had failed to produce notable
results, the government opted for the transfer of hamlet forests to admin-
istrative villages as part of the local improvement movement. Precisely
 The local improvement movement 65
1111 because those villages were, unlike hamlets, part of the legally estab-
2111 lished local government system and hence subject to supervision by
3 prefectural officials and the Home Ministry in Tokyo, it was anticipated
4 that better management of forests could finally be achieved.
5111 In Hokusun, as elsewhere, the transfers did not go as smoothly as the
6 government had hoped, and in many cases were not effected until
7 the 1920s (Tsutsui 1999c: 450–8). Strong opposition from hamlets was
8 the key factor in delay, because hamlet residents still needed the fire-
9 wood and thatch that the common lands provided and, despite the
1011 increased use of commercial fertilizer, most farmers still needed grass
1 cuttings as green manure. Negotiations between village officials and repre-
2 sentatives of hamlets often ended in deadlock as a result and had to be
3111 suspended. Only when the government took note of this opposition and
4 amended the transfer policy in 1919 to allow hamlets to lease parcels of
5 common land were agreements on transfers finally reached at the local
6 level. A contributing factor at this time was the further commercializa-
7 tion of agriculture during and after the First World War, and the greater
8 use of commercial fertilizer, which made farmers less dependent on
9 common lands than had been the case in the years immediately following
20111 the Russo-Japanese War.
1 And so ownership of common lands was finally transferred from
2 hamlets to administrative villages. Income from access fees, etc. never
3 amounted to much, however. Far more revenue was earned for the village
4 coffers from timber operations or the occasional sale of a parcel of land
5111 as an industrial site, and it was now possible for the village office to
6 reach decisions about such revenue-generating measures without undue
7 concern about hamlet opinion and interests (Tsutsui 1999c: 456–8).
8
9
Shrine mergers
30111
1 An attempt was also made during the local improvement movement to
2 replace the separate shrines that existed in hamlets, each one dedicated
3 to the community’s own guardian deity and closely associated with
4 traditional folk beliefs, with a single village shrine that would be part of
5 a State Shinto hierarchy of shrines. The emperor would be the living
6 god at the apex of the system, the guardian deity of the Japanese nation
7 as a whole.
8 The first steps in the creation of State Shinto had been taken imme-
9 diately after the Meiji Restoration, and in Hokusun as elsewhere some
40111 Shinto rites and festivals reflecting State Shinto teachings had taken place
1 in the early Meiji era. But until the Sino-Japanese War most rural resi-
2111 dents still associated local shrines with their own communities and with
66 Tsutsui Masao

traditional natural spirits and deities. In one Hokusun village, Kitagø, for
example, a later village history observed:

Back in those days [the early Meiji era], when there was no sanita-
tion and no one knew how to prevent disease, many families fixed
Shinto or Buddhist charms to the doors of their houses to ward off
sickness, or they hung up a hiru root to keep evil spirits from entering.
. . . Priests went [into the houses of the sick] and said prayers to drive
the sickness-producing god away.
(Kitagø sonshi n.d.: 136–9)

Nor were local shrines resorted to only to ward off disease in the days
before modern hygiene and medicine reached the countryside. They were
also used to resist state efforts to conscript young men into military service
in the early Meiji era. As the same village history noted:

Although the village chief read the imperial instructions to consider

military service an important duty in a formal assembly and lectures
were held in every hamlet to persuade residents of this great oblig-
ation, there were those who sought to evade the rigors of that service.
When they were summoned for the physical examination, they and
their relatives visited all the shrines and temples in the area, praying
that they would fail, and the neighbors would gather to carry out a
ritual purification of the young men and pray to the local guardian
deity to secure exemptions for them.
(Kitagø sonshi n.d.: 144)

The situation changed radically after the Sino-Japanese and Russo-

Japanese Wars, however. According to the village history:

The youth of the village were awestruck when they saw soldiers who
had returned home after the 1894/5 war striding about, their tunics
sporting brilliant medals. Some decided they must enlist, and some
even applied, although in most cases their fathers and elder brothers
withheld consent, not only because they feared putting a younger
son’s life at risk, but also because his absence for three years in
uniform would disrupt the household’s work. After the 1904/5 war,
enthusiasm for everything military grew even stronger, and now
young men prayed at shrines and temples not to fail the physical
examination, but to have the strong, healthy bodies needed to pass,
so they could accomplish brave deeds. Some night school classes
were organized so they could improve their skills before heading off
 The local improvement movement 67
1111 to the barracks. Now those young men who fail the physical exam-
2111 ination feel ashamed, and those who pass but are not actually called
3 up resent their exclusion from the great work of the nation.
4 (Kitagø sonshi n.d.: 144–5)
5111
6 And so, Japan’s victories in these two wars can be seen to have raised
7 popular awareness of the Empire of Japan to an ever greater extent and,
8 in the process, to have transformed local shrines from places with the
9 power to protect young men from conscription to places that would enable
1011 them to ‘accomplish brave deeds.’ Shrines were in the process of changing
1 from sites of resistance to the modernizing policies of the state to sites
2 mobilizing a spirit of service to that state.
3111 The state also pursued specific shrine policies to encourage further
4 change. In 1900, a Home Ministry communiqué was transmitted to
5 villages, stating that they should consider merging all shrines that were
6 not fully self-supporting financially. In 1906 an imperial edict announced
7 that towns and villages should provide funding for religious observances
8 at shrines of exceptional significance – that is, those with connections to
9 the imperial house or nation, those venerating members of the warrior
20111 class or daimyo, and those whose enshrined deity had performed meri-
1 torious deeds in the area. Those purely local shrines dedicated to the
2 worship of nature were excluded. In response, the head of Sunto county
3 announced in 1909 that all small shrines lacking any particular historical
4 significance should now be merged, that is, enshrined together in one
5111 location.
6 How did this work out in practice? The government had envisioned
7 shrine mergers to create just one shrine in each administrative village,
8 but this proved unfeasible, especially in villages with many local shrines,
9 and in the end efforts were concentrated on producing just one shrine in
30111 each hamlet or section of administrative villages. According to my survey
1 in what is now the town of Oyama, but where six administrative villages
2 existed in the early 1900s, between 1903 and 1918 some 34 shrines were
3 merged into just 17. Roughly two-thirds of these mergers took place
4 between 1907 and 1910.
5 It was mostly small shrines dedicated to such natural deities as moun-
6 tains, forests and trees, to the harvest god Inari or to the ancestors of
7 residents that were selected for merger, and most of the merged shrines
8 were either local branches of shrines found throughout Japan – for
9 example, Hachiman shrines or Sengen shrines – or they bore the name
40111 of the administrative village or village ward in which they were located.
1 Shrine mergers did not proceed at all as quickly as government offi-
2111 cials seem to have expected, and even today there are shrines in provincial
68 Tsutsui Masao
Japan, including in the Oyama area, that exist in their original form and
location. That said, however, many mergers did occur eventually, and the
demise of the local shrines that sustained the nature worship of local resi-
dents contributed to the waning of nature worship itself, no doubt
facilitating the indiscriminate taking of natural resources from nearby
mountains and meadows by local residents at just about this time.
Moreover, merged shrines receiving financial support from adminis-
trative villages increasingly became sites for ceremonies relating to the
emperor and the state. One of the first such occasions in Hokusun was
in July 1912, when news of the Meiji emperor’s grave illness reached
the district. In Kitagø, all village officials, elementary schoolteachers and
schoolchildren gathered at the main shrine in the community to pray for
the emperor’s recovery, and village residents, too, ‘paid visits to the shrine
in great numbers to watch as priests performed rites on behalf of the
stricken emperor. Popular sentiment focused on the shrine during His
Majesty’s illness’ (quoted in Tsutsui 1999a: 253). The enhanced role
played by village shrines such as this one no doubt facilitated further
shrine mergers later on.

The promotion of agricultural improvements

Here, it will be useful to review changes in Japanese agriculture during
the earlier decades of the Meiji era before examining efforts to improve
agriculture during the local improvement movement.
By about 1900 such commercial crops as cotton, rape and indigo that
had flourished during the Tokugawa period had been displaced by cheaper
imported cotton, kerosene and chemical dyes, and the planting of such
subsistence crops as millet and buckwheat had also decreased. In addi-
tion, farm households throughout the country were increasingly buying
the cotton cloth, bean paste (miso) and rice wine (sake) they had once
produced themselves.
What farmers were raising instead were cocoons for the rapidly
expanding raw silk industry, mulberry trees for the leaves to feed those
cocoons and rice, maize and vegetables to feed the expanding urban popu-
lation. During the winter slack season, they made charcoal, straw sandals
and other craft items of straw or bamboo. Both in their farming and in
their by-employments, they were seeking cash income with which to pay
taxes and to purchase chemical fertilizers as well as clothing and other
items they had once produced at home (Wagatsuma 1937: 491–9).
If farmers were going to be able to pay the heavy taxes that remained
in effect after the Russo-Japanese War, it was imperative that they
commercialize their operations even further. Village leaders who were
 The local improvement movement 69
1111 responsible for collecting the greatly increased household tax and other
2111 village imposts were keenly aware of this need. For example, as the mayor
3 of Harazato (now in Gotenba City) announced at the inaugural meeting
4 of the village council set up during the local improvement movement:
5111
6 The main purpose of creating this council in our village is to insure
7 that our tax obligations are fully met. It is obvious that the ability to
8 pay taxes stems from economic enterprise. Therefore, to improve
9 agriculture we will establish plots for testing alternative strains of
1011 rice and encourage seed selection by the salt water method. To
1 promote by-employment, we will have training courses on how to
2 improve mulberry yields. I urge you to support progress by this means.
3111 (quoted in Tsutsui 1984: 30–1)
4
5 The mayor in this case was the landlord owning ten hectares mentioned
6 earlier. His family’s tax burden had more than trebled between 1895 and
7 1911, and especially because of increases in the household tax he was
8 now actually paying more in village taxes than in national taxes. That is
9 the main reason why he saw to it that the household tax levied on the
20111 poorest group in the village was increased and secured roughly a 10
1 percent increase in the rents his tenants paid. Other landlords in the
2 Hokusun district also sought to increase their incomes by raising rents
3 or, in some cases, by changing the form in which rents were paid. On
4 upland (dry) fields, for example, rents had traditionally been payable in
5111 soy beans, leaving tenants to profit from the sales of the vegetables and
6 other commercial crops they had begun to grow. Now landlords demanded
7 rents in cash on those fields, the amount based on average prices for those
8 commercial crops. Faced with increased taxes and rents, not to mention
9 expenditure on fertilizer and other necessities, ordinary and poor farmers
30111 had no choice but to assent to the agricultural improvement projects advo-
1 cated by the state and by landlords. Only by means of the further
2 development of commercial agriculture could they increase their cash
3 incomes (Tsutsui 1987: 164, 1999b: 329).
4 There had, of course, been earlier attempts at promoting agricultural
5 improvement in Japan. In the Hokusun district, for example, from the
6 1880s a group of cultivating landlords and substantial owner-cultivators
7 known as ‘industrious farmers’ (seinø) had worked enthusiastically to
8 promote scientific farming of the sort then advocated by the state. An
9 agricultural school had been established in Gotenba in the late 1890s,
40111 and its graduates, mostly the sons of local farm households of fairly
1 modest means, had become instructors and officials of village agricul-
2111 tural associations, working to promote proper seed selection, the use of
70 Tsutsui Masao
horses in plowing and the planting of superior strains of rice. But such
efforts had had limited effects in the area by the turn of the century, in
part because they had concentrated almost exclusively on the cultivation
of rice and wheat. It was not until after the Russo-Japanese War that
more effective measures to promote agricultural productivity were imple-
mented. These were of three main sorts.
The first was the encouragement of improvements tailored to the partic-
ular farming conditions in the various villages of the district, less by the
imposition of changes from above than by motivating local farmers to
increase output. In low-lying villages well suited to paddy rice cultiva-
tion, experimental plots were established to try out new rice strains, and
the farmers who produced the best rice, winter wheat or compost were
rewarded with prizes at local agricultural fairs. In upland districts, on the
other hand, experimental plots of mulberry trees were established, and
prizes given for the best mulberry or maize produced. Moreover, village
agricultural associations allocated some funding to their constituent
hamlets to encourage improvements at an even more local level (Tsutsui
1984).
Second, some town and village agricultural associations launched into
the cooperative purchase of such fertilizers as ammonia, superphosphate
lime and soybean cakes on behalf of local farmers, and some industrial
cooperatives functioning primarily as credit associations were established.
The latter replaced or supplemented the hamlet-based kø and mujin mutual
savings and credit associations on which farmers had long depended,
many of which were in serious trouble in the years following the Russo-
Japanese War (Tsutsui 1986: 84–6, 142–3). Although it would not be
until the 1920s and beyond that these new activities by village agricul-
tural associations and industrial cooperatives developed in earnest, they
began to appear at this time as a means of shoring up the economic status
of small farmers and stabilizing landlord – tenant relations.
Third, full-time agricultural instructors, all of them graduates of
agricultural schools, were attached to town and village agricultural asso-
ciations. Most such inspectors now were the sons of local cultivating
landlords and substantial owner-cultivators, and they made regular visits
throughout the year to all the hamlets in the village, providing detailed
guidance to farmers, not only on the planting, cultivation and harvesting
of rice, wheat and vegetables, but also on sericulture and the proper
management of mulberry fields. Their very ‘hands-on’ approach and their
field trials aimed at finding the varieties and cultivating techniques best
suited to the area helped to implant the ideas of scientific farming that
had begun to spread in the Meiji era and the new imperative of greater
commercialization among local farmers.
 The local improvement movement 71
1111 As a result, there was a considerable increase in the production of such
2111 commercial crops as rice, vegetables and silkworm cocoons in the
3 Hokusun district following the Russo-Japanese War. Not only did this
4 bring greater economic security to small farmers in the area, it also boosted
5111 the local average of actual tenant rents paid to landlords from a postwar
6 low of 70 percent of the stipulated amount due to over 90 percent in the
7 early Taisho era (1912–26).
8 It is also noteworthy that agricultural inspectors played an active role
9 in directing repairs of local roads and bridges, giving talks in elementary
1011 schools, leading youth groups and encouraging attendance at village
1 council meetings and the payment of taxes. Rather than being a completely
2 separate undertaking, agricultural improvement developed as an integral
3111 part of the multifaceted efforts to achieve ‘local improvement’ in the
4 years following the Russo-Japanese War.
5 A final feature of the agricultural improvements carried out at this time
6 was their role in spreading the ideology of the imperial Japanese state
7 among farmers. The Boshin Rescript was solemnly read at the start of
8 agricultural training sessions, and the importance of sericulture as an
9 industry producing the foreign exchange that sustained the empire was
20111 constantly reiterated. In Harazato a particularly ingenious effort to link
1 agricultural improvement with both the village shrine and respect for
2 imperial ideology took place in 1914 under the auspices of a newly orga-
3 nized First Fruits Association. At the agricultural fair held on the day of
4 the Harvest Festival (Niinamesai), the winning exhibits were offered to
5111 the shrine as ‘first fruits,’ the names of the winning farmers were displayed
6 in the shrine compound, and a donation to shrine expenses in the amount
7 of the market value of the winning exhibits was made by the associa-
8 tion. According to its founding charter: ‘By impressing children with
9 divine virtues, making offerings to the Emperor and uniting our hearts
30111 in worship, [we seek] to foster the improvement of agriculture, public
1 morals and devotion to the public good’ (Tsutsui 1984: 26–9).
2
3
The organization of youth
4
5 Revamping the traditional young men’s groups (wakamono-gumi,
6 wakash¨-yado) that had existed in virtually all rural hamlets since the
7 Tokugawa period into a new federation of young men’s associations was
8 another measure implemented during the local improvement movement.
9 Those traditional youth groups had functioned as highly autonomous
40111 clubs, which undertook preparations for local festivals, cleaned shrines
1 and paths and carried out night patrols in their communities, as well as
2111 holding regular meetings. In the early Meiji era, their penchant for drunken
72 Tsutsui Masao
carousing at festivals was viewed with disdain by the authorities in Tokyo
as one of the ‘base customs of the past’ that impeded Japan’s progress
toward proper civilization and enlightenment, and local officials were
urged to reform their ‘barbarism.’ Meanwhile, in the countryside itself,
many young men had been inspired by the on-going freedom and people’s
rights movement (jiy¨ minken undø) and had created associations to study
and debate the political issues of the day. In Hokusun, too, a variety of
such associations were created by the sons of leading local families who
belonged either to the Gakunan Liberal Party or to the Shizuoka Pro-
gressive Party. In addition to speech meetings and political campaigning
on behalf of people’s rights, these associations also organized night school
classes for their members (Matsumoto 1999: 100–3; Nagahara 1999:
128–31, 146–8).
By the 1890s, however, a nationwide system of compulsory elemen-
tary education and optional middle-school and higher education had been
established, a constitution had been promulgated, and from the National
Diet in Tokyo to the towns and villages of Japan a governmental system
had been established, with various political parties having branches in
local districts. In these circumstances, the activities carried out by the
educational and political associations that young men had organized
during the heyday of the quest for ‘civilization and enlightenment’ were
subsumed into the state educational system, on the one hand, and polit-
ical party organizations, on the other. At about the same time, in response
to Japan’s on-going industrial revolution and its recent victory in the
Sino-Japanese War, the long-existing young men’s groups in Japan’s rural
communities began to look for new activities that seemed suited to the
new circumstances in which they found themselves and their country to
add to the activities in which they had always engaged.
In Rokugø village in Hokusun in the mid-1890s both a Progress Society
(Shinpøkai) and a night school were organized in order to ‘provide the
technical education needed to plan the reform and progress of the nation,’
to promote ‘enlightenment and the advance of wealth and power,’ and
‘to curb loose habits among youth . . . promote education . . . and foster
morality’ (quoted in Oyama chø shi 1992: 779). During the Sino-Japanese
War the youth in the village presented 1,213 pairs of straw sandals to
the army’s soldiers’ relief department, collected donations to make a
commemorative object in the shape of a phoenix and prayed that the
army and navy would secure a great victory (Tsutsui 1999a: 200). The
critical stance toward the state that had characterized some youth activ-
ities in Hokusun during the freedom and people’s rights era was gone,
and local youth groups now were seeking of their own volition to acquire
the practical skills and proper morality for the role their members would
perform in an increasingly industrialized and powerful Japan.
 The local improvement movement 73
1111 Steps were taken in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war to capital-
2111 ize on these changes among local youth and on the even greater patriotic
3 sentiment which that war had engendered. The existing hamlet-based
4 youth groups were reorganized into branches of a young men’s associa-
5111 tion in the villages of which they were part, and activities such as late-
6 night carousing were prohibited as totally inappropriate in a civilized
7 nation.
8 We can gain insight into the activities of these newly reorganized youth
9 groups from the diary kept by the 15-year-old Serizawa Kunio, member
1011 of the Harazato Young Men’s Association, between 1913 and 1915
1 (Tsutsui 1984: 28–9). While such traditional activities as preparations for
2 festivals, cleaning of shrines and fire patrols at night continued, a range
3111 of new activities was added. As young Kunio’s entries reveal, the first
4 of these related to farming and to the training of young men as new
5 agents of agricultural improvement:
6
7 Attended the prize show for rice and wheat of the Kawashimata
8 branch of the agricultural association, as well as the branch meeting
9 of the youth association (January 14, 1913).
20111 Attended a training course on sericulture at the elementary school
1 (March 1, 1913).
2
Did work at the youth group’s trial plot on . . . fertilizer application
3
and cultivating techniques (March 8, 1913).
4
5111 Attended a branch meeting of the agricultural association at the agri-
6 cultural instructor’s house, combined with a meeting of the youth
7 association branch (January 20, 1915).
8 Must really learn all I can next year about rice seedlings and try out
9 my own ideas, too, so that I can produce seedlings that no one will
30111 find fault with (October 30, 1915).
1
2 Second, greater contact with village officials and the local military
3 reservists’ association was encouraged as a means of promoting patriotic
4 sentiment among rural youth. As Kunio noted in his diary, at the night
5 school classes on farming that he and other young men attended, they
6 were ‘prompted to hold a ceremony [at which the Imperial Rescript on
7 Education and Boshin Rescript would feature] to honor the work of the
8 village mayor and the enterprise of Mr Katsumata’ (October 27, 1913).
9 He also recorded on the same day: ‘had a welcome home party for the
40111 returning soldiers’ and ‘held foot races and lantern races with the reserv-
1 ists.’ On November 10, 1915, the anniversary of the Taisho emperor’s
2111 enthronement, Kunio made it clear that he saw himself as a subject of
the emperor:
74 Tsutsui Masao
If on this day . . . we truly give thanks for the blessings bestowed by
the Emperors who have reigned in our country since the beginning
of time and pledge to maintain the same spirit of veneration the
Japanese people have demonstrated in the past, then people in other
countries, too, even though not part of the Great Empire of Japan,
will come to celebrate this day with us.

Third, young men’s associations set up small lending libraries and

published newsletters, as well as once again launching the debating and
speech societies that had flourished during the freedom and people’s rights
era (Økado 1993: 257–66). Naturally, state and village officials sought
to use activities in this sphere to promote their own vision of Japanese
youth, but it is important to note that these same activities also made the
young men who took part in them steadily more conscious of their own
autonomy and distinctiveness. They gained new knowledge of the outside
world from the books they read, published their own assessments of
village life and other subjects in their newsletters, and regularly exchanged
views among themselves. During the 1910s most of the opinions they
expressed in speeches or in newsletters were broadly in accord with offi-
cial policy, but the potential for a more critical stance toward the
government of the day and toward village politics was being created and,
with it, one of the bases for the up-welling of ‘rice roots’ democracy in
rural Japan in the 1920s.

The strengthening of village finances and the restructuring

of local politics
As previously noted, the special emergency taxes levied during the Russo-
Japanese War remained in place thereafter, and the household taxes on
which towns and villages depended for most of their revenue more than
doubled between 1904 and 1909 as those municipalities were called upon
to expand local elementary school provision and to embark on diverse
public works projects that had been neglected during wartime. Non-
payment of village taxes became common, jeopardizing the ability of
villages to carry out their appointed tasks.
Moreover, the very projects of expanded schooling, shrine mergers
and assertion of control over hamlet common lands that villages were
urged to carry out during the local improvement movement created
tensions between villages and their constituent hamlets, as well as creating
tensions among hamlets in the same village. Those tensions, in turn, led
to a loss of confidence in village officials among local residents and even
greater resistance to paying taxes. Not a few villages found themselves
 The local improvement movement 75
1111 on the verge of financial collapse, and the government also was alarmed,
2111 especially when the non-payment of village taxes spread to prefectural
3 and national taxes. As a result, both the state and village officials perceived
4 the urgent necessity of measures to shore up village finances, on the one
5111 hand, and to restore peace and harmony within the community, on the
6 other. The measures implemented to achieve these twin goals can be
7 divided into four categories.
8 The first was the strengthening of financial mechanisms and proce-
9 dures within administrative villages. County (gun) officials, who bore
1011 responsibility for supervising the towns and villages in their jurisdictions,
1 began making regular tours to inspect local financial operations and to
2 recommend such changes as they deemed warranted. They also attempted
3111 to mediate any disputes they encountered. Then in 1911, the local govern-
4 ment system itself was reformed, not only to give village mayors greater
5 powers, but also to provide salaries to their deputies, previously honorary
6 posts in most cases, as a means of insuring the professional expertise in
7 accounting and other financial matters that villages seemed to need.
8 Second, various steps were taken to promote enthusiasm for the goals
9 of the local improvement movement among town and village employees
20111 and to get the residents of those municipalities to unite in seeking their
1 realization. The Home Ministry organized lectures on the local improve-
2 ment movement in every part of the country and publicized the
3 achievements of so-called ‘model villages’ as a means of spreading the
4 local improvement ethos. A variety of town- and village-wide organiza-
5111 tions were established to combat hamlet parochialism and inter-hamlet
6 rivalry and to unite all residents in commitment to promoting school atten-
7 dance, diligence and frugality and the prompt payment of taxes. Those
8 who contributed to effective village administration received public
9 commendation (Tsutsui 1984: 29–30, 1999a: 250–2). Moreover, branches
30111 of the village-wide assembly, agricultural association, youth associations,
1 etc. were established in every hamlet or ward. By the early Taisho era
2 the problem of non-payment of village taxes had begun to ease.
3 Third, towns and villages themselves began petitioning higher author-
4 ities at the county, prefectural and national level for financial assistance
5 in meeting some of their funding responsibilities for local schools, roads
6 and bridges or for the transfer of funding responsibility itself to the prefec-
7 ture for county schools (for which towns and villages paid) or for local
8 and county roads. In these efforts, towns and villages were aided by
9 members of county and prefectural assemblies and by the Diet Members
40111 for their districts, who since the mid-1890s had functioned as the upper
1 stratum of men of high repute and influence (meibøka) and become
2111 involved in defending and promoting local interests as part of their role
76 Tsutsui Masao
as politicians. In the hard economic times following the Russo-Japanese
War, they became even more willing to use their good offices to provide
help to their constituencies (Tsutsui 1984: 14–15; 1999a: 217–19).
Fourth, not just county officials but also many of the politicians
mentioned above were enlisted in resolving the disputes engendered by
such projects as school expansion, shrine mergers and the transfer of
hamlet common lands to administrative villages. In most cases, they
sought to bring rival factions together and negotiate a ‘give-and-take’
solution. In Hokusun, for example, what that meant in villages that were
divided over where the expanded elementary school would be located
was getting the losing side to agree to the location of the school in the
rival area in exchange for the promise that desirable road improvements
would be carried out in its part of the community (Tsutsui 1999a: 239–43).
Thus did the activities of the upper stratum of political elites in the
countryside to promote local interests and mediate local disputes merge
with the on-going efforts of the local improvement movement to orga-
nize the rural population into a variety of functionally specific groups
that were centered on the administrative villages in which they lived to
form a local power structure that was qualitatively different from the
power structure of the past. ‘Local notables’ no longer operated simply
as the heads of the wealthiest local families, but as members of political
parties, and the interests they sought to promote transcended the partic-
ular hamlet in which they might live to incorporate the administrative
village, county and prefecture as a whole. Moreover, as a result of the
local improvement movement, a much greater number of formal organi-
zations existed in every village, with branches in every hamlet, each with
posts that needed to be filled. Now smaller, cultivating landlords and
substantial owner-cultivators were appointed to such posts and incorpo-
rated into the lower reaches of the power structure (Tsutsui 1993: 246).

Conclusion
Nor was that all. As a result of the local improvement movement and
the commercialization of agriculture it promoted, even ordinary and poor
farmers became caught up in local conflicts of interest and increasingly
politicized. On the one hand, such farmers usually depended to a greater
extent than did their more affluent neighbors on the benefits that hamlet
membership had traditionally conferred, especially on access to common
lands, and as a result they became involved in efforts to protect hamlet
interests, even at times challenging powerful local landlords in the process.
On the other hand, and perhaps more significantly in the longer term, the
very pressure such ordinary and poor farmers experienced to commer-
 The local improvement movement 77
1111 cialize their operations so that they could bear the burden of local taxes
2111 and pay their rents in full focused the attention of others on their role as
3 the direct agents of agricultural improvement and made them increas-
4 ingly aware of that role as well. In this sense, the local improvement
5111 movement also contributed to the eventual undermining of the new local
6 power structure that crystallized at this time, by creating some of the
7 dynamics that would result in challenges to the ascendancy of local
8 notables, especially the large landlords among their ranks, in the 1920s
9 and beyond. That said, it should be remembered that, while becoming
1011 aware of themselves as agents of agricultural improvement, ordinary
1 and poor farmers were also becoming increasingly aware of themselves
2 as loyal subjects of the emperor, and the two new consciousnesses
3111 would reinforce each other without any sense of contradiction in the years
4 ahead.
5
6
7 References
8 Aoki Køji. 1967. Meiji nømin søjø no nenjiteki kenky¨. Tokyo: Shinseisha.
9 Araiizumi Sadao. 1976. ‘Meiji kokka to minsh¨ tøgø.’ In Iwanami køza Nihon
20111 rekishi, kindai 4.
1 Ishida Takeshi. 1956. Kindai Nihon seiji køzø no kenky¨. Tokyo: Miraisha.
2 Kitagø Sonshi. n.d. Deposited in Oyama chøritsu toshokan.
Kurihara Hyakuj¨. 1949. ‘Nøgyø kiki no seiritsu to hatten.’ Reprinted in Kurihara
3
Hyakuj¨ chosaku zensh¨. Tokyo: Køkura shobø.
4
Matsumoto Hiroshi. 1999. ‘Oyama no Meiji ishin.’ In Oyama chø shi, ed. Oyama
5111 chø shi hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
6 Miyaji Masato. 1973. Nichi-Ro sengo seijishi no kenky¨. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
7 shuppankai.
8 Miyamoto Tsuneichi. 1960. Wasurareta Nihonjin. Tokyo: Iwanami bunko.
9 Nagahara Kazuko. 1999. ‘Bunmei kaika to dentø no kurashi.’ In Oyama chø shi,
30111 ed. Oyama chø shi hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
1 Økado Masakatsu. 1993. ‘Nihon no kindaika to nøson seinen no sekai.’ Shinano
2 45(4).
3 Øshima Mitsuko. 1970. ‘Chihø zaisei to chihø kairyø undo.’ In Kyødoshi kenky¨
4 køza 7, ed. Furushima Toshio, Wakamori Tarø and Kimura Ishizue. Tokyo:
Asakura shoten.
5
Oyama chø shi. 1992. Oyama chø shi 4 (kin-gendai shiryø hen), ed. Oyama chø
6 shi hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
7 Senoue Yuki. 1985. ‘1910 nendai no nøson shakai jøkyø: Shizuoka ken Suntø gun
8 Izumi mura burakuy¨ rinya tøitsu hantai undø o jirei to shite.’ Shizuoka ken
9 kindaishi kenky¨, 11.
40111 Takahashi Kamekichi. 1926. Meiji Taishø nøson keizai no hensen. Tokyo: Tøyø
1 keizai shinpøsha.
2111
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Teruoka Sh¨zø. 1970. Nihon nøgyø mondai no tenkai, vol. 1. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
shuppankai.
Tsutsui Masao. 1984. ‘Nihon teikokushugi seiritsuki ni okeru nøson shihai taisei
– Shizuoka ken Harazato mura no jirei o ch¨shin ni.’ Tochi seido shigaku, No.
105.
–––– 1986. ‘Buraku kyøy¨ kinkoku no un’yø to meiboka shihai,’ 1 and 2. Hikone
ronsø, Nos. 236 and 237.
–––– 1987. ‘Seitø seiji kakuritsu ki ni okeru chiiki shihai køzø 1 – Shizuoka ken
Gotenba chiiki no jirei ni sokushite.’ Hikone ronsø, No. 244.
–––– 1993. ‘Nøson no hensen.’ In Shiriizu Nihon kin-gendaishi, ed. Sakano Junji
et al. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
–––– 1998. ‘Køjø no shutsugen to chiiki shakai – sangyø kakumei ni okeru Fuji
bøseki kaisha to Shizuoka ken Oyama chiiki,’ 2. Shiga daigaku keizai gakubu
kenky¨ nenpø, 5.
–––– 1999a. ‘Chøsonsei kara Nisshin, Nichi-Ro sensø e.’ In Oyama chø shi, 8,
ed. Oyama chø shi hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
–––– 1999b. ‘Oyama no sangyø kakumei.’ In Oyama chø shi, 8, ed. Oyama chø
shi hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
–––– 1999c. ‘Taishø kara Shøwa e.’ In Oyama chø shi, 8, ed. Oyama chø shi
hensan senmon iinkai. Oyama: Oyama chø.
Wagatsuma Tøsaku. 1937. Nøson sangyø kikøshi. Tokyo: Tøkyø Søbunkaku.
1111
2111 5 In search of equity
3
4
Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s
5111
6 Ann Waswo*
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 That the Japanese bureaucracy sought to extend its control to the very
4 lowest reaches of rural society and to prevent the emergence among the
5 rural population of organizations based on social class is beyond doubt.
6 That these goals were easily achieved is another matter entirely.
7 From its inception in 1900, the government’s local improvement move-
8 ment, a series of initiatives designed to integrate rural communities and
9 pre-existing rural interest groups more fully into the central administra-
20111 tive structures of the state, met with both active and passive resistance.
1 The effort to merge the Shinto shrines of individual hamlets into one
2 central shrine for each administrative village in the country aroused
3 considerable opposition among hamlet residents, as did the effort to
4 transfer control of hamlet common lands and forests to the villages. In
5111 both cases the bureaucracy found it necessary to scale down its original
6 objectives. Similarly, many administrative villages responded without
7 enthusiasm – or failed to respond at all – to the bureaucracy’s request
8 for local development plans.1
9 Nor did efforts to ‘declass’ social and economic interests in the coun-
30111 tryside proceed without setback. By early Taishø the bureaucracy had
1 indeed acquired a high degree of control over a number of grass-roots
2 organizations in the countryside – for example, the youth groups that had
3 long existed at the hamlet level and the associations of ex-servicemen
4 that had appeared in increasing numbers after the Russo-Japanese War.
5 Yet at the same time the bureaucracy was confronted with the emergence
6 of the very sort of class-based organizations its social policy had been
7 designed to prevent. These were of two kinds: organizations of landlords,
8
* This paper was originally published in Conflict in Modern Japan History: The
9
Neglected Tradition, ed. T. Najita and J. V. Koschmann (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
40111 sity Press, 1982). It is reprinted in this volume with the permission of Princeton
1 University Press. It was not possible to recast the references into the form used else-
2111 where in the volume, and a rather long list of endnotes has been provided instead.
80 Ann Waswo

which the bureaucracy did not find especially troubling,2 and organiza-
tions of tenant farmers, which it did. My concern in this paper is with
the latter – with the internal organization, activities, and goals of tenant
unions.
My focus will be on the 1920s. After a general description of tenant
unions, I will present a detailed analysis of tenant unions and the tenant
movement in the Izumo region of Shimane Prefecture. Finally I will
discuss the ways in which the bureaucracy dealt with tenant unions. Before
I turn to these topics, however, I should comment briefly on the dimen-
sions of the phenomenon I am considering.
Roughly 50 tenant unions had been established in Japan by 1908, the first
– in Gifu Prefecture – as early as 1875. Thereafter unions began to multi-
ply at a faster rate. By 1917 some 173 unions were known to exist; by 1921,
681, and by 1923, 1,530. In 1923, the first year for which membership
figures are available, 163,931 tenant farmers, or 4.3 percent of all tenant
farmers in the nation, belonged to unions. Four years later, in 1927, the
figure had risen to a peak of 365,331, or 9.6 percent of all tenant farmers.3
In common with popular movements in other times and places, the
tenant movement in Japan was unevenly dispersed throughout the country.
Some prefectures, primarily those in northeastern Japan and Kyushu, had
few unions, whereas others, primarily those in central Honshu and the
Inland Sea region, had large numbers. In many of the latter a consider-
ably higher than average percentage of the tenant population was
unionized. In 1927, for example, over 41 percent of the 4,582 unions in
existence were located in only seven of the nation’s 47 prefectures. The
percentages of tenant farmers in those prefectures who belonged to unions
were as follows: Yamanashi, 41.6 percent; Niigata, 32.0 percent; Kagawa,
29.9 percent; Tokushima, 22.0 percent; Gumma, 20.1 percent; Gifu, 18.5
percent; and Okayama, 17.1 percent.4
However an outside observer might evaluate these statistics, it is clear
that contemporary Japanese perceived them as significant.5 Bureaucrats
in particular regarded the increase in tenant unions and union member-
ship in late Taishø with considerable misgivings. They monitored the
phenomenon carefully, keeping close track of numbers and gauging their
responses accordingly. In short, the degree of unionization achieved was
sufficient, in a society that was sensitive to manifestations of class con-
sciousness, to merit definition as a social problem.

Tenant unions: an overview

Collective action on the part of the lower strata in rural society was by
no means a new phenomenon in Japan. As Stephen Vlastos has shown,
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 81
1111 many participants in the ‘world renewal’ (yonaoshi) uprisings of the
2111 Bakumatsu era were small-scale landholders, tenant farmers, or day
3 laborers.6 In the immediate aftermath of the Meiji land settlement, too,
4 tenant farmers in various regions of the country acted in concert to protest
5111 rent increases or the loss of permanent tenancy rights. Indeed, in subse-
6 quent years whenever harvests were poor and the rent reductions landlords
7 were expected to give were not deemed adequate, tenants were likely to
8 band together to express their grievances.7 What was unprecedented about
9 the situation in the countryside in the 1920s, then, was not that tenant
1011 farmers were resorting to collective action as such. Rather, it was the
1 form that their collective action took, and its thrust.
2 With some exceptions, to be sure, earlier protest movements in the
3111 countryside had been ad hoc in structure and relatively short-lived; the
4 product of a particular perceived crisis, the collectivity dissolved when
5 that crisis had passed. In contrast, the tenant unions that came into being
6 in the Taishø era were formal organizations, with detailed rules of proce-
7 dure set forth in written bylaws (kiyaku). Although established in many
8 cases at a moment of crisis – for example, when heavy rains had damaged
9 the rice crop – tenant unions were designed to function in perpetuity, or
20111 at the very least for an extended period of time.8
1 Like earlier rural protest movements, tenant unions were concerned
2 with improving the economic and social status of their members, and
3 they employed a number of familiar means – the drafting of petitions,
4 for example – to achieve that end.9 In their conception of the measures
5111 that constituted improvement and of the agency by which improvement
6 was to be brought about, however, tenant unions differed markedly from
7 earlier movements. To state the contrast baldly, the ‘world renewal’
8 protesters of the Bakumatsu era sought to eliminate economic and social
9 inequality in the countryside, first by destroying the homes and property
30111 of wealthy peasants, and second by obtaining the intervention of feudal
1 authorities on their behalf. The former, in fact, was conceived of not only
2 as a desirable end in itself but also as a means to the latter. Faced with
3 unambiguous evidence of discontent among the peasantry, rulers would
4 be obliged to demonstrate their benevolence (jinsei) by removing the
5 causes of that discontent and restoring rural society to its natural, harmo-
6 nious state.10
7 Tenant unions, on the other hand, sought to lessen economic and social
8 inequality in the countryside by upgrading the status of tenant farmers.
9 This was to be accomplished primarily by the efforts of tenant farmers
40111 themselves, by means of various forms of self-help, and by the united
1 front they presented to others. The latter was conceived of as a crucial
2111 instrument of power. By employing it, unions attempted to manipulate
82 Ann Waswo
their environment in constructive ways. They negotiated with landlords
rather than destroying their property, and they pressured the government
to provide them not with benevolent treatment but with the equity to
which they felt they were entitled. Implicit in the activities of unions,
and at times explicit in their public statements, was a recognition that the
social order was both man-made and malleable. Justice lay in the future,
not the past; it was to be achieved, not restored.
Both the form and the thrust of tenant unions attracted the attention
of bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture and received fairly exten-
sive coverage in the reports of the tenant union movement they issued
from time to time throughout the 1920s.11 Their reports, which were based
primarily on analysis of union bylaws, constitute a useful source for exam-
ining the structure and aims of tenant unions in greater detail.
In 1925, roughly 35 percent of the tenant farmers who belonged to
unions were members of what the bureaucracy termed associated unions
(keitøteki kumiai), that is, unions that were themselves members of some
larger federation or alliance of tenant unions; 65 percent of the tenant
farmers who belonged to unions were members of autonomous unions
(tandoku kumiai), that is, unions that maintained no formal ties with other
tenant organizations.12 Whether associated or autonomous, however, all
unions appear to have been markedly similar in structure.
Each union was organized as a voluntary association of individuals
within a specified geographical area. Membership generally was open to
anyone cultivating leased land within that area, that is, to pure tenant
farmers who leased all the land they cultivated and to part-tenants who
leased a portion of the land they cultivated and owned the rest.13 The
majority of unions encompassed a single village district (øaza), equiva-
lent in many, though not all, cases to one of the traditional hamlets of
which the village was constituted. The next most common basis was the
village. In 1925, for example, 63.6 percent of all unions were organized
at the øaza level; 93.8 percent of all unions were organized at the village
level or below.14
The entire union membership was convened once or twice a year into a
general assembly to hear reports on union activities and financial outlays,
to decide on future undertakings, and, if necessary, to elect officers. In most
cases, decisions were reached by simple majority vote, although in special
cases, such as a change in the union’s bylaws, a two-thirds or three-
quarters majority might be required. Extraordinary assemblies could be
convened whenever deemed necessary by the union president or demanded
by a specific percentage, usually one-fifth to one-third, of union members.15
Union officers included a president (usually designated kumiaichø,
sometimes sødai) whose duty it was to represent the union in dealings
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 83
1111 with others, direct the union’s internal affairs, and preside at union meet-
2111 ings; one or two vice presidents to assist the president and substitute for
3 him whenever he was unable to perform his duties; one or more secre-
4 taries (kanji, riji) to carry on the union’s day-to-day operations; and a
5111 number of councilors (hyøgiin) to advise the president and to decide on
6 matters delegated to them by the general membership. The union presi-
7 dent and vice president(s) were elected by and from the membership as
8 a whole, for terms varying in length from one to three years. Other offi-
9 cers were either elected by the membership or appointed by the union
1011 president. Officers generally served without salary, although in many
1 cases their out-of-pocket expenses were reimbursed from union funds.
2 In most cases no qualifications for holding office were specified in
3111 union bylaws. All members were therefore eligible for election in theory.
4 In practice, however, most union officers, the president in particular, were
5 men of some influence (kuchi kiku no mono) among local tenant farmers
6 and in their communities as a whole.16 What constituted that influence
7 seems to have varied from place to place. Sometimes it was a higher than
8 average level of education, sometimes a distinguished military record.
9 Probably the most common requirement was a degree of affluence, based
20111 on a larger than average landholding and/or a source of non-agricultural
1 income, which provided individuals with the economic independence and
2 the social status to carry out official union duties.17
3 All unions collected membership dues, although the way in which they
4 assessed them and the amounts they charged varied considerably. Some
5111 unions required an equal sum from every member, whereas others levied
6 dues according to the area of land individual members tenanted or the
7 amount of rent they paid to landlords. Dues might be payable in rice
8 (as were tenant rents in most cases) or in cash. If in cash, they might be
9 as low as one sen per month or range upward to as much as 30 sen per
30111 month.18
1 In addition to articles defining organizational structures, the bylaws of
2 all tenant unions contained articles setting forth objectives and enumer-
3 ating the means that would be employed to achieve them. Although some
4 unions cited only a single objective, most listed two or more. Bureaucrats
5 grouped the objectives that appeared in union bylaws under six headings,
6 which they then divided into two separate categories. In the first cate-
7 gory were objectives they termed non-confrontational (hitaikøteki). These
8 were: the promotion of harmonious relations between landlords and
9 tenants; the promotion of friendship and mutual aid among tenants; the
40111 improvement of agriculture; and the prevention of competition for land
1 among tenants. In the second category were a pair of confrontational
2111 (taikøteki) objectives: the maintenance and improvement of the terms of
84 Ann Waswo

tenancy; and the social advancement of the tenant class.19 Early in the
Taishø period the majority of unions had concerned themselves with what
bureaucrats considered non-confrontational objectives. Beginning in 1918,
however, there had been a dramatic increase not only in the total number
of unions, but also in the number of unions with confrontational objec-
tives. In 1922, 88 percent of all unions cited at least one such objective
in their bylaws, typically in combination with other non-confrontational
objectives. In 1926, 92 percent of all unions cited at least one confronta-
tional objective.20
For each of the six objectives they identified, bureaucrats further iden-
tified a corresponding set of union activities. Their findings, although
based on measures stipulated in the bylaws of individual unions, were
presented in summary form with little or no attention to how frequently
those measures were cited. No one union necessarily engaged in all the
activities in any one set, nor did many unions engage in more than two
or three sets of activities. What follows, then, is not a description of
typical union activity, but rather a description of the entire range of union
activities.21

• The promotion of harmonious relations between landlords and

tenants. Bureaucrats were able to find only a few activities relating
specifically to this objective. The most common were inviting land-
lords to social gatherings, and offering to mediate disputes over
tenanted land.
• The promotion of friendship and mutual aid among tenants. Other
than the holding of social gatherings for tenants and their families,
all the activities bureaucrats listed related more directly to mutual
aid. They were: the establishment of a fund for emergency relief
to members in the event of natural disaster; the creation of flood and
fire brigades; the provision of needed labor to families who had
fallen behind in their work owing to the sickness or conscription of
a family member; assistance to members wanting to lease additional
land; the cooperative purchase of such everyday necessities as bean
paste and soy sauce; and the loan of union-owned funeral goods to
members.
• The improvement of agriculture. Bureaucrats divided the activities
relating to this objective into two categories, improvements to agricul-
tural technology and improvements to farm management. The former
included: the exchange of seeds; the standardization of seed strains;
cooperation in insect control; the encouragement of deep plowing;
the furnishing of materials to construct racks for drying rice; the
encouragement of improved composting techniques; the construction
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 85
1111 of drainage ditches; the improvement of field paths; the joint use of
2111 farm tools; cooperative rice planting; research on possible secondary
3 crops and by-employments; employment of a trained agricultural
4 expert; and training courses in farming methods. The latter included:
5111 the cooperative purchase of livestock, fertilizers, and other necessi-
6 ties for farming; the cooperative sale of farm produce; the provision
7 of loans for farm operations; and the encouragement of efforts to
8 enable tenant farmers to purchase land.
9 • The prevention of competition for land among tenants. More in the
1011 nature of agreed-upon rules of procedure than activities, the stipula-
1 tions related to this objective were: that no union member would try
2 to secure tenancy rights to additional land by offering to pay higher
3111 rents than were paid by the current tenant of that land; that decisions
4 on whether or not to agree to higher rents demanded by landlords
5 would be made by the union’s general assembly, not by individuals;
6 that whenever a member relinquished his cultivating rights to a plot
7 of land he would notify the union immediately so that another member
8 would have a chance to assume them; that no union member would
9 agree to cultivate land currently cultivated by another member without
20111 the latter’s consent; and that if a union member acquired title to land
1 that another union member tenanted he would not demand that the
2 latter surrender the land to him until after a specified period of time
3 had elapsed.22
4 • The maintenance and improvement of the terms of tenancy. Activities
5111 related to this objective were divided by bureaucrats into three groups.
6 First were those designed to standardize the terms of tenancy in a
7 given locality, which included efforts to secure uniformly worded
8 tenancy agreements and to eliminate variations in the due date for
9 rent payments. Second were activities designed to maintain existing
30111 terms of tenancy, which usually involved resistance to landlords’
1 demands for rent increases or the surrender of tenanted land. Third
2 were activities designed to improve existing terms of tenancy. The
3 latter included efforts to secure recognition of cultivating rights,
4 temporary or permanent rent reductions, abolition of ‘added rice’
5 payments and the double-baling of rent rice, and reform of the system
6 of inspection imposed on rents.23
7 Bureaucrats observed that efforts to maintain or improve terms of
8 tenancy often led to conflict with landlords, in which case tenant
9 unions were likely to take one or more of the following steps: survey
40111 and prepare reports on local rent levels and crop yields; study the
1 laws pertaining to the points at issue in the dispute; agree on a united
2111 front among union members in dealing with landlords during the
86 Ann Waswo
dispute, with sanctions to be imposed against anyone who violated
it; refuse to do farm labor or any other type of work for landlords
while the dispute was in progress; provide land or monetary aid to
anyone who was evicted from the land he cultivated during the course
of the dispute; threaten to abandon all of the land involved in the
dispute unless the union’s demands were met; and make partial rent
payments only.24
• The social advancement of the tenant class. Bureaucrats noted that
this was an objective found in the bylaws of recently organized unions,
constituting evidence that the tenancy problem was moving into
‘a stage of class conflict.’ Most commonly tenants sought to achieve
recognition of the right to engage in collective bargaining and, in the
early 1920s, urged speedy passage of a universal manhood suffrage
law. Other activities aimed at promoting the awareness (jikaku) and
knowledge of tenant farmers included publishing union newsletters
and organizing lecture meetings or training courses for union
members.25

In their reports, bureaucrats placed far greater emphasis on describing

tenant unions than on explaining why unions had been organized. When
they did deal fleetingly with issues of causation, they attributed both
the increase in number of unions after 1918 and the concurrent shift
from non-confrontational to confrontational union objectives to exogenous
forces. Chief among those cited were the Russian Revolution and the
First World War, events external to Japan. Also important were the rice
riots of 1918, the industrial labor union movement, and the various demo-
cratic and socialist movements of the Taishø era, all essentially urban
phenomena within Japan.26 Other than making passing reference to the
dislocating effects on tenants of the First World War economic boom and
subsequent bust, bureaucrats did not discuss precisely (or even generally)
how these events and developments impinged on tenants, wrought changes
in their attitudes and aspirations, and resulted in tenant unions.
I will consider the policy initiatives that stemmed from this assess-
ment of tenant unions as an ‘alien growth’ upon the countryside in the
concluding section of this paper. Here I want to examine two aspects of
the descriptive material bureaucrats presented in their reports that seem
to suggest another, more basic explanation: that unions were responses
to endogenous changes within rural society itself and to exogenous forces
that stemmed not from outside Japan or from Japanese dissidents but
from the policies and procedures of the Japanese state.
As bureaucrats noted (without comment), the majority of unions were
organized at the øaza (or hamlet) level. In my view, that is a very
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 87
1111 intriguing fact. If the forces creating tenant unions came from outside
2111 rural society, how did they penetrate directly and immediately to the very
3 core of that society, the ‘natural community,’ where traditional values
4 and attitudes inimical to self-assertiveness and class consciousness sup-
5111 posedly remained very strong?
6 ‘Without the hamlet one cannot even get to paradise.’27 So went a
7 rural proverb that summed up the hamlet’s power over the individual and
8 over individual households. One needed the community to obtain a proper
9 funeral, just as one needed it in life to obtain water, firewood, recreation,
1011 or aid and comfort when disaster struck. Social cohesion and acceptance
1 of status distinctions were necessary to survival. In theory, the poorer
2 members of the community were most affected, and most constrained,
3111 by these imperatives. Far from identifying with others in the same situ-
4 ation, they competed with them for the favor of the local elite and the
5 small but crucial benefits that favor bestowed on them.28 Yet it was in
6 these very communities that the poorer members abandoned competition
7 for cooperation and organized unions.
8 Not every hamlet, of course, had a tenant union. What, then, might
9 distinguish those that did from those that did not? Since, to my knowl-
20111 edge, bureaucrats never compiled a directory of unionized communities,
1 one must rely on information gleaned from various case studies of tenant
2 unions and tenancy disputes. On that admittedly imperfect basis, it appears
3 that unionized communities differed from non-unionized communities in
4 one or more of the following three ways.
5111 First, unionized communities were located where agriculture had
6 become relatively highly commercialized. Communities with unions
7 where thus more likely to be found in the Kinki or Chubu regions of
8 central Honshu than in the Tohoku or other economically backward
9 regions of the country. Within the latter regions, however, communities
30111 with unions did exist in major rice-producing districts and/or in districts
1 where sericulture was an important by-employment among local farmers.
2 Tenant farmers in these communities were all involved in commercial
3 farming in one way or another. Some, typically those with substantial
4 holdings of paddy, participated directly and actively in the marketplace,
5 selling what at times amounted to considerable quantities of rice. Those
6 with smaller holdings often relied on wage labor, a product of commer-
7 cial farming, to make ends meet. If they sold any rice at all they were
8 likely to do so immediately after the harvest, when prices were lowest,
9 because of their pressing need for cash. Later they might have to buy
40111 rice, at higher, early summer prices, to tide them over until their next
1 crop was in. Whatever the size of their holdings, tenants in these com-
2111 munities were affected by rice (or silk) prices and were interested in
88 Ann Waswo
maximizing the amount of their harvest they could retain, that is, in
reducing rent levels.29
Second, unionized communities tended to contain considerable
amounts of reclaimed land. This meant, on the one hand, that local tenants
farmed holdings that were larger and/or less fragmented than did tenants
in neighboring communities, and, on the other, that they possessed, or
believed they possessed, permanent tenancy rights (eikosaku ken) by
virtue of their labor, or an ancestor’s labor, in reclaiming the land they
tilled.30
Third, unionized communities tended to be what one observer has
termed ‘headless.’ That is, few if any landlords were in residence. The
community consisted primarily of owner-cultivators and tenants or, in
some cases, of tenants alone. Landlords might live in another hamlet of
the same village, in a neighboring village, or far away in a town or city.
Their absence from the community itself created both the need for self-
help among remaining residents since there was no local elite to bestow
favors, and the opportunity for self-help since there was no local elite to
demand subordination and deference.31
This brings me to the second aspect of the descriptive material in offi-
cial reports that bears examination: the activities of tenant unions. In my
view, even the activities bureaucrats identified as non-confrontational can
be construed as challenges to established norms. Mutual aid that the
community was supposed to provide was provided by the union. The
union also engaged in agricultural efforts that duplicated those assigned
to the hamlet branch of the village agricultural association (nøkai).32
Indeed, instead of the sharp (and conveniently timed) break circa 1918
between non-confrontational and confrontational activities, one can
perceive a gradual and steady evolution. That is, tenants found it neces-
sary or desirable to provide certain services for themselves. One of those
services was not competing among themselves for land, since competi-
tion drove rent levels up; having found that they could, by cooperation,
keep rent levels from rising, they began to experiment with joint action
to get rents reduced; finding that lower rents did not solve all their prob-
lems, they became interested in other objectives, among them their ‘social
advancement.’33
That exogenous forces influenced this process is evident. Among
those that bureaucrats characterized as ‘alien’ and later Japanese scholars
have viewed as ‘progressive’ were labor union activists who returned to
their native villages, typically after having been fired from their jobs for
participating in strikes; university professors, writers, and intellectuals
who toured the countryside giving speeches on the tenancy system,
monopoly capitalism, and the proletarian movement in Japan and abroad;
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 89
1111 and books, journals, and newspapers that dealt with these and other
2111 ‘radical’ themes.34
3 An even more powerful stimulus to new attitudes and behavior among
4 tenants, however, was the Japanese state. It trained agricultural experts
5111 and sent them out into the countryside where, among other things, they
6 taught tenants how to keep detailed records of their incomes and expen-
7 ditures. It conscripted young tenant farmers and taught them discipline
8 and organizational skills.35 By means of conscription and compulsory
9 elementary education, the state imbued tenant farmers with nationalism
1011 and with a new vocabulary of nationalistic symbols that could be and,
1 as will be discussed later, were used to legitimate tenant grievances.
2 More fundamentally, the state established a system of laws and admin-
3111 istrative procedures to organize all of Japanese society, including the
4 countryside. Under that system tenants continued – as they had before
5 the Meiji Restoration – to occupy an inferior status. The civil code of
6 1898 recognized property rights as superior to leasing rights. Until 1925
7 only property owners were granted a voice in local and supralocal poli-
8 tics. But what had once been defined by custom was now, in principle,
9 justiciable. As in the past, tenants could appeal to a higher authority for
20111 redress of their grievances, but now that authority was impartial law, not
1 benevolent rulers. It was not coincidental that one of the measures tenant
2 unions resorted to in conflict with landlords was ‘study of the laws
3 pertaining to the points at issue in the dispute.’ Law had replaced bamboo
4 spears as one of tenant farmers’ major weapons, just as formal organi-
5111 zations, similar to those of bureaucratically controlled youth, reservists,
6 and agricultural groups, had replaced ad hoc and transitory collectivities.
7 Thus far I, like the bureaucrats whose reports I have summarized above,
8 have not discussed at all precisely how the diverse events and develop-
9 ments I have mentioned impinged on tenants, wrought changes in their
30111 attitudes and aspirations, and resulted in tenant unions. To do that it is
1 necessary to move from the general to the specific and examine tenant
2 unions in one particular region of the country.36
3
4
Tenant unions and the tenant movement in Izumo
5
6 Shimane Prefecture lies along the Japan Sea coast of western Honshu,
7 bordering to the east on Tottori, the south on Hiroshima, and the south-
8 west on Yamaguchi Prefecture. There were some 91 tenant unions in
9 Shimane in 1925, with an overall membership of 5,545 (roughly 7 percent
40111 of the tenant population). These unions were not evenly distributed
1 throughout the prefecture as a whole. Rather, they were concentrated in
2111 its eastern portion, in the region known as Izumo, one of the three kuni,
90 Ann Waswo
or provinces, from which the prefecture had been constituted in the early
Meiji era.
Identified in Japanese myths as the earthly place to which Susano-o
was banished for such transgressions as letting piebald colts loose in the
heavenly rice paddies of his sister the Sun Goddess, Izumo may have
seemed to government officials in the mid-1920s to be living up to the
unruly reputation of its first divine inhabitant. There were 62 tenant unions
in the region in 1925, 60 of them in Nøgi and Yatsuka gun, its two largest
administrative districts. The unions in these two gun had a total of 3,195
members, 57.6 percent of all the unionized tenants in the prefecture.
Roughly 26 percent of all tenant farmers in Nøgi and 23 percent of
all tenant farmers in Yatsuka belonged to unions, and the unions they
belonged to were almost all of the sort bureaucrats recognized as
confrontational, that is, unions that sought to maintain and improve the
terms of tenancy and/or to bring about the social advancement of the
tenant class.37
The confrontational stance of unions in Izumo was a fairly recent devel-
opment. As late as 1920 most unions in the region were informal,
clandestine organizations at the hamlet or øaza level, whose leaders met
under cover of darkness to discuss the state of the upcoming harvest and
to decide the amount of rent reduction each tenant should request from
his landlord.38 Those unions that were formally and openly organized
generally avoided use of the words ‘tenant farmer’ or ‘union’ in their by-
laws, styling themselves ‘friendship societies,’ ‘cultivators’ associations,’
or ‘agricultural clubs’ instead.39
In dealing with landlords these unions generally based their appeals
on expectations of benevolent treatment: once aware of their tenants’
problems, landlords would, it was assumed, grant relief. Those landlords
who failed to do so were subjected to various forms of ostracism, or
murahachibu. Tenants would refuse to take part in funerals, weddings,
and other occasions involving the offending landlords. Their ultimate and
most explicitly economic weapon was the joint return of the land they
leased; no tenant in the community would cultivate the land of any land-
lord who behaved improperly toward tenants.40
By 1925 the situation was radically different. The majority of tenant
unions were formally organized as voluntary associations and openly
employed the words ‘tenant farmer’ and ‘union’ in their bylaws. They
held public meetings in the hamlet hall, local schoolhouse, or Buddhist
temple. Instead of requesting benevolence, tenants now demanded equity,
and did so collectively, not individually.41 Moreover, a considerable
proportion of unions in Izumo, although still organized at the hamlet or
øaza level, now belonged to a regional body, the Tenant Federation
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 91
1111 of Nøgi and Yatsuka Districts. In place of isolated tenant unions there
2111 was now a tenant union movement.
3
4
5111 Toward confrontation
6 This development of tenant unions in Izumo can be attributed to two
7 closely related causes: the accumulation of new or newly perceived griev-
8 ances among tenant farmers during late Meiji and early Taishø, and the
9 emergence of an able group of local tenant union leaders. A contributing
1011 cause was the founding in 1922 of the Japan Farmers’ Union (Nihon
1 nømin kumiai, or Nichinø), the country’s first national tenant union feder-
2 ation, by Sugiyama Motojirø and Kagawa Toyohiko.
3111 Since relatively few ordinary tenant farmers could or did commit their
4 thoughts to paper, one must infer their grievances from their actions. For
5 that purpose, reports on early tenancy disputes in Shimane Prefecture
6 constitute the best available source. In those reports one finds a number
7 of new complaints in company with such old and familiar ones as poor
8 harvests and the threatened loss of cultivating rights owing to the sale of
9 tenanted land or the owner’s desire to farm the land himself. The two
20111 new complaints that figured most prominently were the added burdens
1 imposed on tenants by rice inspection, and the hardships imposed by land
2 adjustment.
3 Shimane did not institute a mandatory program for inspecting all rice
4 grown in the prefecture until the late 1920s. Beginning in late Meiji,
5111 however, various steps were taken to improve the quality and market-
6 ability of local rice. In 1906 regulations were issued to standardize the
7 size of rice bales throughout the prefecture. At roughly the same time, a
8 program was established for inspecting rice destined for sale outside the
9 prefecture, and landowners were encouraged to establish procedures at
30111 the local level for improving rice quality. In response, many landlords
1 organized fairs and awarded prizes to tenants who produced superior rice.
2 Others established local inspection facilities and began to require rent
3 payments in rice that met minimum standards of quality. One of the most
4 ambitious undertakings of this sort was organized by landlords in Nøgi
5 gun, a major rice-producing district in the prefecture.42
6 From the very start tenants found much to complain about in these
7 efforts, correctly perceiving that they bore the added expenses involved
8 while landlords reaped the profits. Among other things, tenants had, in
9 most cases, to manufacture smaller and more durable rice bales than
40111 had been necessary in the past and spend more time in threshing and
1 drying their rice before baling it. They objected, too, to continued demands
2111 from landlords for ‘added rice’ payments, the extra quantity per bale
92 Ann Waswo
traditionally required to compensate for leakage and spoilage, perceiving
that stronger packaging and longer drying made such additional rice
payments unnecessary. Protesting that soil and drainage conditions on
the land they cultivated limited the quantity of high-grade rice they
could produce, they opposed the imposition of quality standards on rent
payments, or, if they accepted the idea of such standards, demanded
that they be set as low as possible to reflect accurately local growing
conditions.43
The land adjustment projects carried out in many parts of the pre-
fecture in the early 1900s were designed to improve the irrigation and
drainage of paddy fields, thereby solving one of the problems tenants
faced in meeting quality standards for rent, and to straighten boundaries
between fields, thereby making cultivation easier and more efficient. In
the short run, however, land adjustment elicited far more opposition than
enthusiasm among tenant farmers. They complained about the difficul-
ties of growing crops while adjustment projects were under way, about
slight but disturbing declines in the fertility of the soil in some newly
adjusted fields,44 and, most of all, about rent increases in the aftermath
of adjustment. The latter, for example, was the cause of a dispute in three
villages of Nøgi gun, where a large-scale adjustment project had been
carried out in 1907. Before work commenced, landlords had agreed to
hold rents at their current level for a year or two after the project was
completed. Then rents might be raised in accordance with increased
productivity. During 1907, however, prices for both materials and labor
rose dramatically, bringing the actual cost of adjustment to almost 16 yen
per tan, more than twice what landlords had estimated. Most landlords
thereupon decided to raise rents immediately. Protesting the unfairness
of such a step, tenants in the three villages banded together and refused
to pay any rents at all until landlords agreed to abide by their initial
promise not to raise rents for a few years.45
In addition to grievances such as the above, prefectural officials also
cited the behavior of landlords as a source of discontent among tenants.
Some landlords acted arbitrarily and arrogantly in their dealings with
tenants, like the jitø, or estate managers, of Japan’s feudal past. Where,
at the same time, landlords showed no interest in their tenants’ well-being
or in improving local agriculture – where, in other words, landlords were
functionally if not physically absent from their communities – a partic-
ularly volatile situation existed. This was clearly the case in Araijima, a
village in Nøgi gun, where a dispute involving 10 of the village’s 12
hamlets erupted in 1921. The most militant stance in the dispute was
taken by tenants in Kami-Araijima hamlet where, officials noted, land-
lords had not supported the hamlet agricultural association or permitted
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 93
1111 the establishment of a hamlet cooperative for the purchase of tools, fertil-
2111 izers, or other supplies. Instead they had established a bank and sought
3 to make it the sole source of loans and credit in the community. Finding
4 this state of affairs unsatisfactory, tenants organized their own associa-
5111 tion, the Kami-Araijima Tenant Farmers’ Friendly Society, and began to
6 provide for themselves many of the services – including the cooperative
7 purchase of essential supplies – their landlords had denied them.46
8 Without these and other grievances to fuel it, the tenant movement in
9 Izumo would have been impossible. But the existence of grievances
1011 alone was not enough. Most tenants, however upset they might be at one
1 time or another over specific issues, lacked the verbal and conceptual
2 skills to link those issues into a generalized indictment of the status quo.
3111 Still dependent on landlords for access to land and on their communities
4 for access to water, fuel, and other necessities, they were wary of openly
5 defying authority and established norms of behavior. They might organ-
6 ize a self-help society in their own hamlet, but they remained unaware
7 that tenants in other hamlets or villages faced problems similar to theirs.47
8 The movement, therefore, had to be engineered. Someone had to articu-
9 late the grievances of tenant farmers, formulate a systematic statement
20111 of the problems they faced, create a program for solving those problems,
1 and build a viable organization for achieving desired change. In Izumo
2 this was accomplished by a small group of young, educated, and deter-
3 mined union leaders, chief among them Yamasaki Toyosada.
4 Yamasaki was born in 1898 in Mori, a village in Nøgi gun. Although
5111 there were several large landlords resident in the village, none lived in
6 Ido hamlet where his home was located. Of the 15 families in the hamlet,
7 14 owned no land at all, not even the plots on which their houses stood.
8 Yamasaki’s was the only family of means in the hamlet, owning one chø
9 of paddy fields, one tan of upland fields, and two chø of forest land. In
30111 addition, they leased four or five tan from a village landlord and rented
1 out one tan to another cultivator.48
2 Yamasaki graduated from the village elementary school in 1913 and
3 enrolled in a nearby agricultural school. He soon quit attending courses,
4 however. Thereafter he subscribed to a few correspondence courses
5 offered by Nihon and Meiji universities, and in the process became inter-
6 ested in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, but for all practical purposes
7 his formal education ended when he was 15 years old.
8 One reason he quit school was his growing involvement in local poli-
9 tics and the tenant movement. Yamasaki’s father had long served as head
40111 (kuchø) of Ido hamlet, and from an early age Yamasaki had assisted him
1 in performing his duties, first running errands and later taking a more
2111 active part in hamlet business. Yamasaki appears to have enjoyed dealing
94 Ann Waswo
with people – as he recalled years later, if there was something his father
found difficult to say to someone, he would volunteer for the task – and
there seems to have been a lot of dealing for him to do. Ido was, by
Yamasaki’s account, a tempestuous community. Adultery was not
uncommon. In addition, local residents enjoyed gambling, which tended
to bring them into conflict with one another over the repayment of debts,
and they produced considerable quantities of ‘moonshine’ sake, which
brought them into conflict with the authorities. In late Meiji, money-
lending kø (mutual financing clubs) were introduced into the hamlet.
Many residents had difficulty repaying the loans they received, and for
several years Ido was ‘a nest of process servers.’49
Yamasaki seems to have regarded the trouble his neighbors got into
as a product of poverty, not of moral failings on their part. He also
regarded their poverty as a problem to be solved. A poor hamlet, in his
view, was destined to become even poorer unless its inhabitants took
measures to defend themselves. All the administrative reforms in the
village during the early 1900s – the merger of shrines, consolidation of
common lands, definition of water rights – had been carried out to Ido’s
disadvantage. Just as wealthy hamlets asserted themselves at Ido’s
expense, wealthy landlords took advantage of Ido’s tenants, charging high
rents and taking back their land – ‘an everyday occurrence’ – if tenants
fell at all behind in rent payments.
Yamasaki attributed his initial commitment to the tenant movement to
an essay he read at the age of 12 in the journal Nihon oyobi Nihonjin.
It concerned the death of the last aboriginal Tasmanian in a Melbourne
hospital and the dispatch of his bones to the British Museum. Moved to
tears by the obliteration of an entire people, Yamasaki began to reflect
on what had already happened in his own community. His family had
once been residents of Nakatsubo hamlet, adjacent to Ido and home to
30 households. One by one the families had died out or moved away,
until only his was left. No one remained to look after the graves, and
finally the hamlet had been erased; the Yamasakis, as the sole survivors,
were absorbed into Ido. A sinister progression of events occurred to
him: the death of an individual, a family, a hamlet, and, ultimately, a
people. Resolved to do something to prevent Ido from following the same
sad course as Nakatsubo, Yamasaki started working to improve local
conditions.
That resolve manifested itself in two ways, both of which later figured
importantly in Yamasaki’s career as a tenant union leader. First, he began
to study law, buying for himself an inexpensive edition of the revised
penal code and a copy of the civil code. He carried one or another with
him wherever he went and studied the contents at every opportunity.
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 95
1111 By the age of 17 he was known in the hamlet and in the village as some-
2111 thing of a legal expert.50
3 Second, Yamasaki began experimenting with agricultural improve-
4 ments. With several other youngsters from the local boys’ association
5111 (shønendan) he reclaimed some wasteland on the outskirts of his hamlet
6 and began growing vetch.51 As it turned out, the land in question was in
7 the public domain and within the boundaries of another hamlet. In 1918,
8 20 years after the promulgation of the civil code, the government began
9 a survey of public lands throughout the country to determine whether
1011 individual plots should revert to state ownership or be granted to their
1 cultivators. Yamasaki and the others received a formal notice from the
2 head of Nøgi gun, acting on behalf of the prefectural governor and the
3111 home minister in Tokyo, informing them that the land they cultivated
4 was deemed state property and should be returned forthwith. On
5 Yamasaki’s advice, the group sent back a postcard stating that as far as
6 they were concerned the land was theirs by virtue of occupancy and recla-
7 mation. Under no circumstances would they surrender it. Whenever gun
8 officials appeared on the scene to confront them, the boys managed
9 to disappear.
20111 On August 30, the day before the deadline for resolving ownership
1 rights, the entire group received a summons to appear at the gun office.
2 This time they agreed to go, and for several hours they were subjected
3 to severe scolding for their recalcitrant behavior. Toward evening they
4 were handed forms in which they renounced their claims to the land and
5111 were ordered to sign. Yamasaki nodded, and everyone signed. Then he
6 announced that, of course, their signatures were invalid. As minors they
7 could make no binding legal agreement without the approval of an
8 attorney. Unfortunately it was too late in the day to arrange for that.
9 Abruptly the boys left for home. The deadline came and went, and their
30111 right to cultivate the land was confirmed. The episode became something
1 of a cause célèbre in the area, and as Yamasaki later recalled gave him
2 confidence in his legal knowledge.52
3 In 1921, the Mori Agricultural Friendly Society, the first village-wide
4 tenant union in Shimane, was created, and Yamasaki, then aged 23,
5 became a member. The following year he read a newspaper announce-
6 ment about the planned organization of a nationwide tenant union by
7 Sugiyama Motojirø and Kagawa Toyohiko. Interested parties were invited
8 to attend a meeting at Kagawa’s church that April. Intrigued, Yamasaki
9 went to the meeting, finding himself one of a handful of ‘real farmers’
40111 among the 50 or 60 people present. Both the idea and the platform of
1 the Japan Farmers’ Union (Nichinø), the organization established at that
2111 meeting, appealed to him. In particular, he was impressed by Sugiyama’s
96 Ann Waswo
call for efforts to raise the awareness (jikaku) of tenant farmers and for
‘moderate, steady, rational and legal’ efforts to reform the tenancy
system.53 Yamasaki returned home determined to organize a Nichinø
branch in his own village and to join with tenant leaders in neighboring
Tottori Prefecture to form a Nichinø federation in the San’in region. In
the end, he did neither, although he did become leader of a regional feder-
ation in Izumo that incorporated Nichinø’s original goals.
In the first place, his proposal to affiliate with Nichinø did not appeal
to the leaders of the Mori Friendly Society. ‘They were all old men in
their fifties,’ Yamasaki wrote later. The head was a member of the village
assembly and did only what the mayor told him to do. Several landlords
served as advisors to the organization. Yamasaki therefore decided to
bypass the society and form his own Nøgi-wide organization. Using Ido
hamlet as his base, and with the aid of several young tenant farmers from
Ido and a hamlet in a nearby village, he set to work. The young men
toured Nøgi by bicycle, stopping at every hamlet with a tenant union and
sounding out its leaders about their willingness to join a regional feder-
ation.54
At the time, Yamasaki was still interested in taking part in the planned
Nichinø San’in rengøkai, a federation of unions in Shimane and Tottori.
By July of 1923, however, he had abandoned the idea. As early as its
second national congress that year Nichinø had begun a ‘turn to the left’
of which Yamasaki thoroughly disapproved. Proposals were made
(unsuccessfully for the time being) to create an alliance between farmers
and industrial workers and to replace the organization’s original em-
phasis on economic reforms with an emphasis on politics. In addition,
steps were taken to centralize the decision-making structure of the feder-
ation, reducing the autonomy of affiliated unions.55 As Yamasaki recalled
later:

Nichinø [leaders] began to proclaim that tenancy disputes were merely

rehearsals for the revolution. That frightened farmers. I believed that
it was possible for farmers to create a rational tenancy system and
achieve fair rent levels all by themselves. Ultimately, they could
abolish tenancy altogether, but it was necessary to proceed step by
step.56

Another factor was his dislike of what he termed the formulaic (køshi-
kishugi) stance of Yuihara Genzø, one of the key leaders of the tenant
movement in Tottori. The man was ‘not a farmer’ and did not pay adequate
attention to actual conditions in the countryside.57 Yamasaki therefore
dissociated himself from the San’in Rengøkai and later withdrew from
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 97
1111 Nichinø itself. When Nichinø experienced its first split in 1925, Yamasaki
2111 participated in the splinter organization established by Hirano Rikizø, the
3 All Japan Farmers’ Union League (Zen Nihon nømin kumiai dømei).
4 Once again, however, he rapidly became disillusioned and withdrew:
5111 ‘I found that I’d been misled. [The league] was merely an effort to use
6 the farmers’ movements as a base for getting ahead in politics . . . It was
7 wrong to use unions as political tools.’58
8 Instead, Yamasaki pursued an independent course, following his own
9 ideas and instincts and building what he later described as ‘an organiza-
1011 tion of real farmers with their feet firmly planted on the soil.’59 In
1 December of 1923 13 unions throughout Nøgi joined together to form
2 the Nøgi Tenant Federation (Nøgi gun kosaku rengøkai), with Yamasaki
3111 as its head. In 1924 a similar federation was established in neighboring
4 Yatsuka. The two united in 1925 as the Tenant Federation of Nøgi and
5 Yatsuka Districts (Nøgi Yatsuka gun kosaku rengøkai). In July of 1926
6 the Shimane Prefecture Tenant Federation (Shimane ken kosaku rengøkai)
7 was formed, with over a hundred branches in the five gun of eastern
8 Shimane. Yamasaki served as head of the federation, which controlled
9 the tenant movement throughout Izumo.60
20111
1
2 Building an organization
3 At its inception in 1923, the Nøgi Tenant Federation was composed of
4 pre-existing tenant unions in the district, whose leaders had responded
5111 favorably to proposals for a gun-wide body. Once the federation had been
6 created, Yamasaki and his associates began to expand its scale, encour-
7 aging the formation of affiliated unions in communities where no tenant
8 unions had existed before. The strategy they followed then and in later
9 years consisted of four stages: the selection of appropriate communities;
30111 the identification of a local leadership cadre; the enrollment of members
1 within the community; and the education of those members in the prin-
2 ciples of unionism and the means of achieving rural reform.
3 Yamasaki was less interested in creating an extensive movement than
4 in creating a strong one. Rather than simply moving from one commu-
5 nity to the next, he preferred to concentrate on those communities – in
6 most cases, hamlets – that he thought could sustain an effective local
7 union. To him that meant communities where farming was the principal
8 occupation of inhabitants and rice their major crop, and where few, if
9 any, landlords resided. Landlords might live elsewhere in the village, but
40111 the farther away they lived and the larger their holdings in the commu-
1 nity concerned, the better. Hamlets in which there were many small
2111 landlords and/or many small, part-time farmers were to be avoided.61
98 Ann Waswo
In Yamasaki’s view the best choices for leaders of a new union were:
adopted sons who had been born and raised in other communities; newly
returned soldiers or activists in the local reservists’ association (zaigø
gunjinkai); anyone who had left the community for a time and then
returned; former landlords who had ‘sunk to the status of tenant farmers’;
sons of owner-cultivators who were ‘on the verge of ruin’; men with
experience as sawyers, stonemasons, or in other skilled occupations; and
Buddhist priests or faith healers (kitøshi).62 As indicated by this list,
Yamasaki had a decided preference for ‘outsiders,’ defined either liter-
ally (individuals who came from elsewhere and had no deep roots in the
community) or figuratively (individuals who had had experiences in the
community or elsewhere that made them dissatisfied with the status quo).
How successful he was in identifying such people in hamlets throughout
Izumo is unknown. What is clear is that ‘outsiders’ constituted the
majority of the movement’s top leadership. Another characteristic they
had in common was youth, as the following examples suggest.
Terada Noriaki, son of a tenant farmer, was a childhood friend of
Yamasaki’s from Ido. He had served two years in the army and on the
basis of his past education and military record returned home in the early
1920s with a non-commissioned officer’s certificate. Thereafter he
helped Yamasaki organize the Nøgi federation and, as will be discussed
later, took charge of the movement’s publicity and publishing efforts. His
union activities came to the attention of the military police who, according
to Terada, prevented his promotion to corporal in the local reservists’
association.
Ishiwara Toshio had been a member of the Buddhist Socialist party
in Izumo before becoming interested in the federation. Although subjected
to various pressures to abandon his union activities – he had to resign
the headship of the fire brigade in his village, his brother was turned
down for admission to military cadets’ school on the grounds that a close
relative was ‘a suspicious character,’ and at one point his in-laws threat-
ened to make his wife leave him – he remained involved, specializing,
like Terada, in publicity work.
Adachi Iwao became involved in federation activities at the age of 17,
later serving as head of the youth bureau in the Shimane federation. Born
in neighboring Yatsuka gun, he developed an interest in socialism at an
early age. That proved awkward because the government had designated
the community in which he lived a ‘model village’ that embodied the
best of purely Japanese virtues. Made to feel unwelcome at home,
Adachi moved to Nøgi and volunteered to work with Yamasaki. The two
subsequently toured Yatsuka by bicycle, organizing the gun-wide feder-
ation there.63
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 99
1111 Enrolling members in a new union was a relatively easy task if the
2111 first two stages of organizational strategy had been carried out properly,
3 that is, if an appropriate community had been selected and appropriate
4 leaders identified. As full-time farmers, local tenants had no sources of
5111 non-agricultural income to distract their attention from the tenancy system.
6 Producing rice as their major crop, they were aware of the burdens
7 imposed by high rents in kind and recently instituted standards for baling
8 and rice quality. Subject to relatively few face-to-face contacts with land-
9 lords, they were not as constrained by traditional expectations of
1011 deferential behavior as were tenants who saw their landlords regularly.
1 That men from their own communities were leading them (however alien-
2 ated or marginal those men might be) muted the defiance of norms of
3111 community solidarity that membership in a union necessarily involved.
4 Also helpful in attracting members were Yamasaki’s growing reputa-
5 tion as a champion of tenant farmers in Izumo and the success of unions
6 already affiliated with the federation in winning meaningful gains
7 (principally, but not exclusively, rent reductions) for their members. The
8 proclamations of Yamasaki’s regional federations, which were designed
9 to persuade ordinary farmers of the legitimacy of their grievances, were
20111 another factor. Avoiding unfamiliar and therefore threatening termi-
1 nology, these proclamations portrayed class action – objectively a radical
2 departure from established norms – as a higher form of patriotism. Both
3 to mollify fears among tenants and to forestall reprisals by officials, they
4 invoked imperial symbols on behalf of the tenant movement. The procla-
5111 mation of the Tenant Federation of Nøgi and Yatsuka Districts (1925)
6 provides a good example:
7
8 The majority of Japanese are farmers, and the majority of farmers
9 are tenants. By their efforts the nation is protected, its land culti-
30111 vated, and its people fed. But for many years now the evils brought
1 about by the unimpeded power of wealthy landlords have hung like
2 a dark cloud over the countryside, obstructing the infinite benevo-
3 lence of His Imperial Majesty. Moreover, rural living standards have
4 not kept pace with progress in the rest of the country. As a result
5 tenant farmers have truly suffered. At this time, we tenant farmers,
6 inspired by the fundamental principles of the Empire and by the spirit
7 of love for humanity, stand in the forefront of rural reform. We reject
8 all violent means, for we are convinced that championing righteous-
9 ness and morality gives us greater strength.
40111 Until the light shines brightly on the countryside – we shall perse-
1 vere steadily until both the fields that we love and we ourselves are
2111 favored with boundless Imperial grace. In striving to reach our goals
100 Ann Waswo
we must resist all blandishments and be prepared to face untold perse-
cution. Whatever voices are raised against us, we must remember
that our cause is just.64

Yamasaki was sharply criticized by contemporary leftists for ‘mis-

guiding’ tenant farmers with such notions as imperial benevolence and
love of humanity. Later Japanese scholars of the tenant movement have
also criticized him for his acceptance of ‘the emperor system,’ his use
of army reservists as union leaders, and, above all, his ‘defection’ from
Nichinø. To most of these scholars, Yamasaki ranks with the leaders of
the two other independent regional federations, Sugai Kaiten of Niigata
and Yokota Hideo of Gifu, as a reactionary within the tenant movement
and ‘traitor’ to its revolutionary cause.65 Although I tend to feel that major
social and political restructuring – perhaps even a revolution – was needed
in Taishø Japan, I cannot accept this negative evaluation of Yamasaki.
It ignores, among other things, the success he had – greater, I think, than
the more explicit and ideologically ‘advanced’ efforts of Nichinø or its
affiliates – in mobilizing tenant farmers and nurturing in them a new and
implicitly revolutionary consciousness. Far from being a reactionary, he
used what later came to be regarded as reactionary symbols and reac-
tionary rhetoric with consummate skill to accomplish the crucial task of
getting farmers into unions and into his federation. Once that was
achieved, Yamasaki and his associates began educating those tenants,
instilling in them new knowledge and new ideas that enabled them both
to perceive the need for change and to act to bring it about.
One of the most important facets of the fourth, educational stage of
the movement’s organizational strategy was publication of a newspaper,
Kosakunin (The Tenant Farmer). Realizing that there were limits to what
could be accomplished by personal contacts alone (kuchi dake de wa
ikenai), Terada Noriaki suggested in 1923 that some sort of newsletter
be produced to publicize the federation’s activities and goals. He and a
few other young men from Ido collected 30 yen, bought a mimeograph
machine, and began experimenting with it.66
From this modest beginning evolved an increasingly polished and effec-
tive publication. In 1926 six-page issues of Kosakunin appeared on a
regular monthly basis and were distributed to over 3,000 subscribers.67
Professionally printed instead of mimeographed, the paper appears to
have become more relevant and accessible to its intended audience than
it had been initially. ‘You were once just a paper for literary youth,’ a
reader wrote in 1926, presumably referring to a plethora of abstract and
theoretical essays in earlier issues, ‘but now you have developed into
something completely different.’68 That ‘something completely different’
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 101
1111 consisted of useful advice and inspirational messages written in straight-
2111 forward Japanese that most tenant farmers could comprehend. Furigana
3 were printed beside each Chinese character, giving its phonetic reading.
4 Plain verb forms and a conversational style were employed.69 Except in
5111 articles about politics, which I will discuss at a later point, the vocabu-
6 lary usually was simple and concrete. On the rare occasions when a
7 technical term or abstraction appeared, it was carefully defined.
8 Most of the writing for Kosakunin was done by Yamasaki, Terada,
9 and other federation officers, but subscribers too were invited to submit
1011 news items, essays, poems, and reflections. The following letters from
1 two Izumo tenant farmers give some idea of the kind of response the
2 paper generated:
3111
4 I just received your paper. I too am a propertyless tenant farmer. I
5 am a miserable creature who lives at the very bottom rung of capi-
6 talist society. The key to our liberation is a class newspaper like
7 yours. By reading this kind of newspaper we get the weapons to
8 break our chains. In that connection, please add my name to your
9 list and lead me to the goal of liberation. I enclose stamps for a two-
20111 year subscription.
1 When the factory where I worked was destroyed in the recent
2 [Kanto?] earthquake, I came back to the countryside. What shocked
3 me most about my village was the credit union. Everyone including
4 tenant farmers contributes money, and then the landlords and wealthy
5111 people borrow that money at low interest rates and use it as capital
6 for their investments. Poor people like us, who don’t have anything
7 to put up as collateral, can’t get a loan at all. So that credit union is
8 just a money-making tool for landlords. I’ll let you know if I uncover
9 anything else about this credit union. Your paper has a lot to do in
30111 the future. Keep up the struggle. I got you thirty subscribers here.
1 Goodbye.70
2
3 In addition to items on such practical topics as how to set up a coop-
4 erative to purchase farm tools,71 Kosakunin devoted considerable space
5 to legal questions of concern to tenant farmers. In the March 1926 issue,
6 for example, an extended discussion of ordinary and permanent tenancy
7 rights was printed. It began with the observation that one of the reasons
8 landlords threatened lawsuits over rent arrears and other issues was to
9 intimidate tenants; ignorant of the law and ‘terrified of going to court,’
40111 tenants would, landlords hoped, give in to demands without a struggle.
1 Only by knowing their rights and conquering their fear of the law could
2111 tenants protect themselves. Moreover, they could use that knowledge to
102 Ann Waswo
improve tenancy conditions. Getting rents reduced, the article observed,
was a particularly easy task: Kosakuryø o makesasu koto mo asameshi
mae no koto da.72 In the May issue the more specific question of how a
tenant should go about protecting his rights of occupancy in the face of
an eviction attempt by his landlord was discussed. Like most other arti-
cles containing useful information, this one also contained an exhortation
to rely upon the union; its officers and legal advisers would do the neces-
sary paperwork free of charge and help the tenant if he went to court.73
Other articles were devoted entirely to exhortation. Each issue of the
paper began with an introductory essay (kantøgen) about some aspect of
the tenancy system or the tenant movement, often taking the season as
its starting point:

It is March. The plum trees are in blossom, the nightingales sing.

But tenant farmers are too exhausted from . . . hard work and their
miserable diet of pickled radishes to take any pleasure in the fragrance
of the blossoms or the silvery voices of the birds.
All they can think about is getting some rice to eat. The crop they
raised last year . . . is now completely gone. . . . [They tell themselves]
the seeds they planted weren’t good enough. They didn’t tend their
fields carefully enough. . . . This year they will use better seeds and
work harder so the rice will not desert them in their time of need.
What fools tenants are to think this way! ‘Poverty can be over-
come by diligence.’ That is what they’ve learned at school. But it’s
not so. No matter how hard they try, they can’t solve their problems
by diligence alone.74

Another introductory essay, this one written by Yamasaki for the June
issue, invoked the experiences of farmers in early summer to attract atten-
tion:

It’s that busy time of year when everyone could use some extra help
in harvesting the vetch or the wheat and getting ready for planting
rice. With the silkworms coming out of molt again we get hardly any
sleep at night. Our joints ache from weariness . . . when we get up
in the morning.
Why must we work so hard? . . . What rewards do we tenants get
for our labor? Do we even get enough food to fill our bellies, or cloth-
ing to keep us warm, or decent houses to protect us from the rain?
We’re not machines . . . or draft animals. We’re human beings.
. . . That our labor goes to make idle landlords richer . . . is enough
to make me weep. Were we growing crops for the benefit of society
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 103
1111 as a whole, it wouldn’t matter how hard we had to toil. If more rice
2111 or more cocoons were needed so that many people could live, we’d
3 work for nothing if need be. . . . But we aren’t going to be the means
4 by which a few human beings can live in . . . luxury.75
5111
6 The theme of the injustice of the status quo was dealt with in numerous
7 other articles, among them one rather provocatively titled ‘Why are Tenant
8 Unions Trying to Destroy Landlords?’ Like the June introductory essay
9 quoted above, it too made the point that tenants were not seeking change
1011 for purely selfish reasons, this time citing their dedication to the villages
1 in which they lived:
2
3111 [People ask] why have tenant farmers organized unions and set out
4 to destroy the landlords they used to honor and obey? . . . Consider
5 the condition of villages today. On the one hand there are tenant
6 farmers who find it hard to make ends meet no matter how hard they
7 work. On the other hand are landlords, who don’t work at all. . . .
8 These landlords are few in number, but the number of hard-pressed
9 tenants has increased steadily. More and more of them have had to
20111 abandon their native villages and head for the cities. The fields of
1 the idle landlords are no longer carefully tended and may eventually
2 become wasteland. . . .
3 We feel no hatred toward landlords as individual human beings.
4 But when we consider them as members of a community who ought
5111 to . . . be concerned about that community’s future, we can only
6 regard them as enemies. They are traitors who are destroying the
7 villages in which they live by their own lust for riches. . . . If they
8 would abandon their petty concerns and strive to serve the commu-
9 nity as a whole, they would benefit too. It is to get them to recognize
30111 this fact and stop charging excessive rents that we have organized
1 tenant unions. . . . We do this out of duty and love toward our ances-
2 tors who settled those villages originally and brought the land under
3 cultivation. We will go on . . . until [landlords] change their mistaken
4 ways and vow to strive for the benefit and happiness of the entire
5 community. We’re not out to destroy landlords. We’re trying to
6 educate them.76
7
8 Yamasaki wrote frequently for Kosakunin, returning again and again
9 to the theme that tenant farmers could improve their lives by solidarity
40111 and solidarity alone. Although aware of developments in the tenant move-
1 ment in other parts of the country, he rarely referred to them. Indeed, he
2111 seems to have held both his wider knowledge of the world and his youth
104 Ann Waswo
in check, adopting instead the homespun approach of a wise old man.
Building on what local tenant farmers knew, he sought to lead them to
new perceptions. ‘One can’t tell the value of a house when the weather
is fine,’ he wrote on one occasion.

But in a heavy storm one knows right away if the roof is strong enough
or not. . . . The same thing is true of villages. A village that has a tenant
union and one that doesn’t or a village with a solid union and a village
with a weak union – they’re all the same when things are going
smoothly. . . . But in this world we don’t get bumper crops every year.
Landlords change too, as sons take over from their fathers. It happens
sometimes that a greedy fellow becomes head of the house. . . . It’s at
times like that that the value of a union becomes clear. . . .
The weakest tenants are those who’ve formed a union under their
landlord’s direction. They think they’re well off, but they end up
paying higher rents than anybody else. Next . . . are tenants in villages
with no unions at all. They get summoned one by one [to the land-
lord’s house]. Terrified, they prostrate themselves and . . . pay
whatever the landlord asks. Then come villages with unions that don’t
belong to a federation. At first, just the very existence of a union in
the village will scare the landlords. . . . But landlords are no fools.
After a few years at most they’ll start studying the law and talking
with lawyers. Then the union starts having trouble. . . . Nobody is
there to help. . . . The landlords sense that the union is weak and move
in for the kill. . . . That’s when the advantages of belonging to a feder-
ation will be clear.77

In an unusually long essay titled ‘The Power of Unions to Transform

Dogs and Cats into Human Beings,’ Yamasaki cast his thoughts about
unions in yet another way, this time clearly revealing his commitment to
achieving dignity, as well as equity, for tenant farmers:

‘Beg for three days and the taste will last three years.’ By relying on
the benevolence of their landlords as if they were dogs or cats, tenant
farmers have led a beggar’s existence for a long time. . . . They and
their families barely scrape by on the basis of the favors they receive
– the relief, the sympathy presents, the patronage, the pity.
. . . Whether they live or die, eat or starve, depends on their landlords’
generosity. If tenants don’t do exactly as their landlords say . . . land-
lords will turn them away just as they’d turn away stray dogs. . . .
There is absolutely no reason for landlords to treat tenants like
beggars, and yet they persist in doing so. . . . Recently, too, some
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 105
1111 tenant farmers have allowed themselves to be organized into land-
2111 lord–tenant conciliation unions. They pride themselves on belonging
3 to the committees that dispense bonus rice, sympathy rice when crops
4 are poor, relief rice, and money for fertilizer or farm tools. Despite
5111 the high-sounding name and fancy organization [these conciliation
6 associations] are nothing more than the latest means landlords have
7 seized upon to keep tenants in their place, the latest means to keep
8 them living like beggars. The tenants who serve on the committees
9 think they’re doing grand work, but in reality they are nothing but
1011 the landlords’ cats-paws. . . .
1 Landlords know that they take an unfair share of the crop from
2 tenants, and they’re afraid tenants will realize it. They try to divert
3111 the tenants’ attention by doling out relief rice, sympathy rice, and
4 bonus rice. Portraying themselves as benevolent oyakata, they give
5 tenants as charity what they ought to give them as their due. As a
6 result, tenants get cheated not only out of their property, but out of
7 their self-respect as well. . . .
8 The only way to change this – to free tenants from the opiate of
9 benevolence and paternalism that oppresses them in everything they
20111 do and reduces them to groveling for favors like dogs and cats, the
1 only way to elevate them from the demeaning status of beggars to
2 the dignity of human beings – is by means of tenant farmer unions.
3 Only when landlords . . . have been subjected to the pressure of a
4 union created by tenant farmers themselves will tenant farmers
5111 become aware of their own power. Then they will begin to develop
6 pride and self-respect. They will come to see that by relying on their
7 own united strength they can do without favors. . . . That will be the
8 day that dogs and cats become human beings, the day that tenants
9 forever free themselves from humiliating dependence on landlords.78
30111
1
The organization in action
2
3 One can divide the activities of the successive federations of tenant unions
4 in Izumo into three general categories: those concerned with landlord–
5 tenant relations and the tenancy system; those concerned with farm
6 management and community life; and those concerned with politics at
7 the local and supralocal level. Not surprisingly, given the strong views
8 and considerable influence of Yamasaki himself, the movement continued
9 to emphasize activities in the first category throughout its existence.
40111 Activities in the second category played in retrospect a pivotal role. On
1 the one hand, they constituted a logical extension, which Yamasaki
2111 actively encouraged, of efforts to improve the lives and livelihoods of
106 Ann Waswo
tenant farmers. On the other hand, they led – equally logically, it would
seem – to concern with village politics and, ultimately, to concern with
the policies of Shimane Prefecture and the central government. Political
activities, in turn, involved the movement in the rivalries of the national
tenant movement, which contributed to growing dissension among leaders
of the Shimane tenant federations and resulted, in late 1927, in the expul-
sion by Yamasaki of several federation members. The tenant movement
in Izumo never recovered from this rupture.
Among federation activities concerned with landlord–tenant relations
and the tenancy system, two figured most prominently. The first was what
Yamasaki termed, not without a touch of wit, rent adjustment (todai seiri),
todai being a local term for rent payments. If land itself could be adjusted
(køchi seiri) so too could tenant rents. The latter should be just as rational
and efficient as the former. Instead of being determined by custom or by
what Yamasaki termed ‘exploitation’ (charging whatever the market
would bear), rents should be based on the productivity of the land
concerned and on an equitable sharing of risks and costs between land-
lord and tenant.79
Based partly on Yamasaki’s own assessment of what was wrong with
the tenancy system and partly on his reading of ‘A Treatise on Fair Rents’
by Nasu Hiroshi, professor of agricultural economics at Tokyo Univer-
sity,80 the movement’s program of todai seiri evolved through several
stages. Initially, local tenant unions sought reform of the traditional system
of granting rent reductions when harvests were poor. Since the Meiji era,
if not earlier, it had been customary for local landlords to reduce rents in
bad years so that tenants were left with a minimum of four to of rice per
tan. By whatever means they could devise – sometimes a petition would
suffice, in other cases prolonged negotiations were required – tenants
sought to raise that minimum, to six to at least, and up to eight, ten or
twelve to if their bargaining position was exceptionally strong.81
Next, local unions began carrying out detailed surveys to determine
the productivity level of each plot of land within their communities and
compiling equally detailed accounts of costs of production and income
earned per tan. It is significant and by no means coincidental that both
tasks were assigned to tenant farmers themselves. In Yamasaki’s view,
tenant farmers knew the land better than landlords or so-called agricul-
tural ‘experts’ from elsewhere and therefore could do a better job of
surveying it.82 That they might gain satisfaction from accomplishing the
task and useful insights from keeping records of their incomes and expen-
ditures had also, one can safely conclude, occurred to Yamasaki.
The penultimate stage of seiri was the calculation of fair rent levels.
Yamasaki advocated, and the federation appears to have adopted, what
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 107
1111 he termed the 8:3/4:6 system as a guiding principle. Of the first eleven
2111 to of rice produced per tan, eight to would go to the tenant to cover his
3 costs of production and three to would go to the landlord to cover his
4 tax liabilities. Any remaining produce above the eleven to thus accounted
5111 for, which constituted only 42 percent of average yields per tan in Shimane
6 for the period 1916–20, would be divided on a 4:6 basis between land-
7 lord and tenant, respectively, compensating the former for his investment
8 and the latter for his labor.83
9 The final stage was the presentation of proposed new rent levels to
1011 the landlords concerned. According to Yamasaki, by 1927 roughly two-
1 thirds of all landlords in Izumo had agreed to rent adjustment, more or
2 less along the lines described above. In some cases, the prospect of a
3111 virtually automatic determination of rents even in years of poor harvest
4 had been enough to gain their consent. In other cases, landlords had
5 agreed to adjustment only after tenants had showed their solidarity and
6 determination during months or even years of disputes.84
7 The second federation activity concerned with landlord–tenant rela-
8 tions and tenancy conditions was conflict itself, that is, the theory and
9 practice of tenancy disputes. As promised in the pages of Kosakunin, the
20111 federation came to the aid of tenants or tenant unions involved in disputes,
1 providing advice on strategy and tactics and, when necessary, free legal
2 aid. Equally important as far as Yamasaki was concerned, the federation
3 organized training courses and workshops throughout Izumo to inform
4 tenant farmers about laws relating to tenancy, and in particular the tenancy
5111 conciliation law of 1924.85
6 Although Nichinø took a formal stand against the conciliation law,
7 Yamasaki concluded after careful study of its provisions and of the
8 proceedings of the parliamentary committee that had considered it that it
9 had potential; if well-coached in its intricacies, tenants could use what
30111 was basically ‘bourgeois’ legislation to their own advantage. Among other
1 things, both sides of a dispute subject to conciliation could be made to
2 appear personally in court. Used to delegating such tasks to their lawyers,
3 landlords would be on unfamiliar ground.86 While conciliation was in
4 progress, moreover, landlords could not file suit against tenants to recover
5 unpaid rents or to secure return of their land. Tenants therefore could use
6 the law to gain time, negotiating privately with some of the landlords
7 who were party to the dispute in the hope of reaching a favorable and
8 precedent-setting settlement of outstanding differences.87 Given the
9 primacy accorded to private property rights in Japan, tenants could not
40111 expect a favorable decision in all cases of conciliation. But if they
1 presented a legitimate reason for the position they took in the dispute,
2111 provided evidence to back up their claim, and observed the correct forms
108 Ann Waswo
and terminology in all their communications with the judge, they stood
a reasonable chance of success. In cases involving eviction, the only legit-
imate claim tenants had was possession of permanent tenancy rights. In
cases involving rent arrears, their only legitimate claim was a poor
harvest.88 In addition to discussing these points at workshops, the feder-
ation made general guidelines and sample petitions available to all
affiliated unions.89
Like tenants elsewhere in the country, tenants in Izumo were not inter-
ested solely in lower rents and more secure cultivating rights, important
as those issues were. They also wanted improvements in farm manage-
ment and community life. At the annual meeting of the Nøgi federation
in 1924, for example, nine of the 25 proposals for action submitted to
the membership by participants concerned the latter two issues. Among
the specific problems identified in these proposals were the high cost of
everyday necessities and farm tools, excessive demands made by the
community for donated labor and monetary contributions, and lack of
uniformity in the scheduling of holidays.90
The federation’s basic response to these and other concerns was to
provide information and encourage self-help by member unions. Work-
shops on new farming techniques and demonstrations of new tools
were scheduled at annual meetings or local union gatherings, and simply
written pamphlets on a variety of topics were made available below cost.91
In December 1926, an entire page of Kosakunin was devoted to infor-
mation about why and how local unions should establish consumer
cooperatives for the purchase of salt, sugar, and other staples.92 Earlier
the same year Kosakunin reported in glowing terms an experiment in
cooperative farming under way in Ido and Yokoyama hamlets of Mori
village. Tenants in the two hamlets had pooled the land they cultivated
and formed teams to carry out all farming tasks. By early June the team
had planted rice in seed beds and harvested the vetch crop. In early July
they transplanted the rice seedlings into the paddy fields. Afterwards a
commemorative photograph was taken, and the tenants marched trium-
phantly though the village.93
There were limits, however, to the improvements in farm management
or community life that tenants could effect on their own. Even if, as in
Ido, they constituted the entire hamlet population and therefore could
decide hamlet affairs as they saw fit, they had to deal with other hamlets,
and other interests, in the village if they were to realize desired changes
in the allocation of water for irrigation, the scheduling of repairs on
roads and bridges, or other matters that fell within the purview of the
village assembly. Similarly, numerous policies of the prefectural govern-
ment – concerning taxes and surtaxes, for example, or the location of
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 109
1111 agricultural experiment stations – impinged on the economic interests of
2111 tenants, just as prefectural police regulations (to be discussed later)
3 impinged on the very existence of tenant unions and the conduct of
4 tenancy disputes. In short, tenants were impelled toward involvement
5111 in politics.
6 Until 1925 that involvement was limited by property qualifications on
7 the franchise at both the local and supralocal levels. Tenants might lobby
8 successfully for voting rights in their own hamlets, which were not
9 affected by government regulations on that score.94 But only tenants who
1011 owned a fair amount of their own land could vote or run for office in
1 village elections, and only a tiny minority of tenants owned enough land
2 to qualify to vote in prefectural or national elections. In general, then,
3111 tenant unions relied on indirect (though not necessarily ineffectual) means
4 to change village policies, and from time to time they petitioned gun or
5 prefectural officials on issues of concern to them.
6 The passage of the universal manhood suffrage law in 1925 enabled
7 tenants throughout Japan to vote and run for office at all levels, a right
8 they exercised with some success that very year when village elections
9 were held. Out of 9,331 villages in which elections occurred, tenants
20111 were elected to assembly seats in 3,142, acquiring a total of 9,061 seats.
1 In 761 of those villages, tenants acquired one-third or more of the total
2 number of seats, possessing an absolute majority of seats in 340 villages
3 and occupying all seats in 38.95
4 As a result of village elections in Shimane, the number of tenant farmers
5111 holding assembly seats rose from 51 to 172 (out of a total of 878). Of
6 these tenants 147 (86 percent) had ‘no connection’ with tenant unions, a
7 situation that prevailed throughout Japan. Eleven successful candidates
8 were members of Nichinø-affiliated unions, located predominantly in the
9 Iwami region of western Shimane. Fourteen were members of ‘other
30111 unions,’ including an unspecified number who belonged to unions in the
1 Nøgi Yatsuka federation in Izumo.96 Federation leaders may have encour-
2 aged individual tenant farmers to seek office at the village level, but no
3 formal policy was established in that connection.
4 Nor was more than a modest effort made to mobilize Izumo tenants
5 for the prefectural assembly election of 1926. Several articles about poli-
6 tics appeared in the February issue of Kosakunin. One presented a program
7 for ‘the rationalization of prefectural government,’ which called primarily
8 for reform of local taxes and improvement of the educational system.
9 Another article pointed out the need for attention to prefectural politics,
40111 urged tenants to support candidates who would work on their behalf, and,
1 significantly, called for candidates to come forward: ‘Anyone with
2111 common sense will do. . . . Not having money or education makes no
110 Ann Waswo

difference at all.’97 At the time, the election was less than three weeks
away. No tenant candidates had yet been selected, and none would be.98
After February 1926 there was relatively little mention of politics in
the pages of Kosakunin. When the subject did appear, it was treated in
a manner that contrasted sharply with the newspaper’s general style. Both
the language and the concepts employed were complex, not simple; the
erudition, not the experience, of readers was being addressed. Rather than
being presented as a concern of all tenant farmers, politics was dealt with
as the special concern, indeed, the mission, of rural youth.
‘We know well,’ one article began, ‘that all of nature is divided into
predators and prey. Every living thing, be it plant or animal, must fight
for its survival.’ The article then pointed out that youth had a vital role
to play in the ongoing struggle for survival with society:

The exploiters and the exploited are now in conflict . . . and it is our
duty as members of the exploited class to join the fray. . . .
History shows that all change has been carried out by youth. Is
there no lesson there for us? . . . Youth must attack all systems
of thought based on customs of the past. We cannot leave this task
to the older generation. They’ve lost hope. They’ve lost the will to
prevail. We must lead the way in building a new society.99

Another article in the same issue called upon young tenant farmers to
use their new political rights to reform local government:

Just as a jewel, if left uncut, has no value, a human being who has
never battled adversity cannot develop his full potential. . . . Lincoln,
who freed hundreds of thousands of Negro slaves at the time of the
American Civil War, endured great hardship [as a boy], as did
Napoleon, who spent his childhood in wretched poverty. Haven’t
young men of the tenant class, who have fought against adversity
[all their lives], developed more character than young landlords? I
fervently hope these propertyless young men will soon be brandishing
the sword of reform in village politics.
In every country of the world the energy of youth has played a cru-
cial role in history. Our own Meiji Restoration, carried out by
a mere handful of young men from Satsuma and Chøsh¨, is but
one example. Like a great ball of flame their energy brought about the
end of Tokugawa tyranny and the establishment of a national gov-
ernment. Youth easily defeated age and took command of political
reform. Reflecting on their victory, it seems fit and proper that the
youth of today . . . stand up against the tyranny of landlords. . . .
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 111
1111 Fabius, a hero of ancient Rome, retreated before the overwhelming
2111 force of Hannibal’s invading army rather than face him in battle.
3 Then when Hannibal’s soldiers had grown lax and dropped their
4 guard, Fabius mobilized all his troops and launched a massive
5111 counterattack. The invading army was smashed to pieces.
6 Today the old guard [in the villages] has grown lax. They have
7 no idea of the passions that stir our young blood. This is the time to
8 act, to sound the cry for political reform spearheaded by youthful
9 vigor. The corrupt old system will be buried, and a new village politics
1011 embodying [our] glorious aspirations will be born.100
1
2 While some enthusiastic young federation members wrote articles like
3111 the above, others tried to get the federation to adopt an active political
4 program and, in particular, to cooperate with other organizations in the
5 prefecture and the country in electoral campaigns. Initially their efforts
6 met with a degree of success. The federation took part in a conference
7 of proletarian groups (musansha dantai hyøgikai) in the San’in region in
8 October 1925. In April 1926 Yamasaki attended the inaugural meeting
9 of Hrano Rikizø’s All Japan Farmers’ Union League in Tokyo and agreed
20111 to become one of its directors. As mentioned earlier, however, he with-
1 drew after a brief period, disillusioned that Hirano and others were using
2 tenant unions to further their own political careers. Already critical of
3 Nichinø for advocating ‘revolution,’ Yamasaki decided against formal
4 cooperation with other tenant or proletarian organizations. The program
5111 of the Shimane Prefecture Tenant Federation, which was established in
6 July 1926, did not foreclose the possibility of political action – as one
7 of its goals, the organization called for passage of a law ‘that firmly estab-
8 lished tenancy rights’ – but it included no specific plans for getting such
9 a law enacted. Moreover, it reiterated the movement’s longstanding
30111 commitment to ‘moderate, rational, and legal methods’ and, in what
1 constituted a rejection of the ideological tone of recent political essays
2 in Kosakunin, stated the organization’s resolve to ‘put an end to class
3 conflict’ (kaiky¨ tøsø zetsumetsu o kisu).101
4 Rebuffed in their efforts and increasingly isolated within the move-
5 ment in Izumo, a number of young federation members began to look
6 with increasing favor on the tenant movement in western Shimane, or
7 Iwami. Affiliated with the regional Nichinø federation in Tottori
8 Prefecture, the Iwami movement had emphasized leftist politics from
9 its inception. One of its principal leaders, Ogawa Shigetomo, was a
40111 graduate of Kansai University. Returning home to Iwami in 1924, he had
1 first worked as an elementary schoolteacher and then had resigned to
2111 devote all his energies to organizing tenant farmers. The other leader,
112 Ann Waswo
Toyowara Goro, had been a labor union activist in Tokyo and had been
arrested for his role in a textile workers’ strike in 1926. Returning to his
native village in Iwami to recover from the severe case of pleurisy he
had developed in prison, he became involved in the local tenant move-
ment. In March of 1927 Ogawa and Toyowara organized their own
regional federation in Iwami, the Nichinø Shimane ken kosaku rengøkai,
with 13 branches and 572 members. Two months later they staged
a May Day celebration in Iwami that resulted in numerous arrests and,
in Toyowara’s opinion, heightened the political consciousness of all the
tenants who had taken part.102 Another focus of interest for would-be
political activists in Izumo was the Seiji kenky¨kai (Political Study Group)
in Matsue. Organized in 1923 by Fukuda Yoshisaburø, a Marxist with
experience in the Tokyo labor movement, the kenky¨kai became active
after 1925 in efforts to create a Labor–Farmer party organization in
Shimane.103
Early in 1927 Nichinø experienced its second split, like the first, over
the issue of whether or not to support the Labor Farmer party. Sugiyama
Motojirø, president of Nichinø since its creation, resigned and in March
organized the Zen Nihon nømin kumiai (All Japan Farmers’ Union, or
Zennichinø). Now opposed to the Labor–Farmer party and in favor of
more moderate political efforts, Sugiyama appealed to and received the
support of Yamasaki. With two ‘defecting’ unions from the Nichinø feder-
ation in Tottori, Yamasaki organized the Zen Nihon nømin kumiai San’in
rengøkai (All Japan Farmers’ Union Federation of the San’in Region) in
April 1927. That step precipitated a clash with pro-Nichinø and pro-
Labor–Farmer party members of the Izumo movement.
In July 1927, after several weeks of jockeying for position, Kimura
Kamezø, a young federation member from Yatsuka gun who was also
involved in the Seiji kenky¨kai, issued a proclamation calling for a united
front between the competing Nichinø and Zennichinø federations in
Shimane ‘in response to historical necessity and the will of the masses.’
Opposed to any dealings with Nichinø and, one suspects, offended at this
direct challenge to his leadership, Yamasaki expelled Kimura from the
federation. Kimura then rallied his supporters in Yatsuka and succeeded
in getting the gun tenant organization to withdraw from Zennichinø and
affiliate with Nichinø. Several months later Yamasaki experienced another
and more painful blow. Adachi Iwao, who had worked with him since
1923 and who was then in charge of youth affairs within the federation,
issued a proclamation calling, as had Kimura, for a united front. Yamasaki
responded by firing Adachi forthwith. Taking a number of supporters
with him, Adachi moved to Matsue. In mid-October he, Kimura and other
Nichinø supporters in Shimane joined with the Nichinø-affiliated unions
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 113
1111 in Tottori to form the San’in chihø nømin dantai kyøgikai (Conference
2111 of Farmers’ Organizations in the San’in Region).104
3 Finally, in the spring of 1928, the breach between Nichinø and
4 Zennichinø at the national level was healed, the result being the creation
5111 of the Zenkoku nømin kumiai (National Farmers’ Union, or Zennø). That
6 June the two competing organizations in Shimane united as well, although
7 each wing maintained its own leadership structure ‘so as not to upset its
8 members.’105 Yamasaki took part in the new Zennø federation in Shimane,
9 but without enthusiasm. In his view, the movement was at a stalemate,
1011 caught between ‘landlords and bureaucrats on the one hand, and commu-
1 nists on the other.’106 Local organization in Izumo was ‘paralyzed,’ its
2 older leaders ‘tired’ from an endless stream of late-night meetings, and
3111 many of its younger leaders tending to regard the movement as a ‘game.’
4 Members had fallen into debt because they had spent more than they had
5 gained in rent reductions. Lacking confidence in local union leaders, they
6 did not pay their dues.107 In Shimane as a whole, membership in the
7 Zennø federation had declined to 520. The most active part of the feder-
8 ation was its youth branch, which engaged in literary study, conducted
9 experiments in proletarian theater, and advocated reduction of the voting
20111 age to 18, conscription reform, support of public libraries, and the aboli-
1 tion of bourgeois sports.108
2
3
4 Bureaucratic responses
5111 In early August of 1926, five tenant union leaders from throughout Japan
6 were invited to present their views to a special committee of the Kosaku
7 chøsakai, a committee headed by the minister of agriculture and charged
8 with considering proposals for new legislation concerning tenancy rela-
9 tions and tenant unions.109 Yamasaki Toyosada was one of the five. After
30111 identifying himself as a ‘mere youth of 29,’ inferior in education, expe-
1 rience, and knowledge to the 30 or so members of the committee, he
2 spoke for roughly an hour, describing the problems that tenant farmers
3 in Izumo had faced in the past, the goals and methods of the union move-
4 ment he led, and his views on the need for the legislation under
5 consideration.110
6 Concerning a law to redefine tenancy relations Yamasaki expressed
7 enthusiasm. Existing law was geared to protecting landlords’ rights to
8 collect rents. What was required, he argued, was attention to productivity,
9 that is, to encouraging tenants to raise output. Education in farming
40111 techniques was not enough. Tenants needed to have a stake in the land
1 they cultivated, and the way to provide that was by giving them greater
2111 security of tenure.
114 Ann Waswo
Yamasaki then turned his attention to tenant unions, and urged the
committee to leave them alone. Although proposed legislation would
indeed grant de jure recognition to unions and to their right to engage in
collective bargaining, it would at the same time subject them to govern-
ment regulation – and that, in his view, would do far more harm than
good. ‘All other agricultural groups that exist today,’ he observed, ‘depend
on official patronage . . . and leadership. They are weak, hothouse organi-
zations.’ In no other country at no time in history have such organizations
ever achieved meaningful results. The only way to solve the problems
villages face is to rely on ‘natural,’ not on ‘manufactured,’ organizations:

Like a pine tree that has made a place for itself on a rocky crag,
tenant unions have survived despite many obstacles. . . . It is because
they have grown up in the wild that they are strong, and that wild
strength [yasei no chikara] is the only means by which the country-
side can be led to a bright future.111

Yamasaki’s positive view of ‘the wild strength’ of tenant unions was

not shared by the Japanese government. On the contrary, the very exist-
ence of ‘wild,’ unregulated organizations challenged bureaucratic
conceptions of the state. At the same time, cooptation – bringing those
organizations into the state’s administrative structure and making them
channels for the implementation of state policy – was not an acceptable
response, for that would entail recognizing and legitimizing the interests,
however broadly or altruistically defined, of a single social class.112
Despite some sentiment within the Ministry of Agriculture in favor of a
tenant union law, no such legislation was ever enacted. Instead the bureau-
cracy sought to eradicate tenant unions. To do so it employed two different
approaches. The first was repression, which began with petty harassment
in the early 1920s and culminated in the arrests of ‘radical’ unionists in
1928, 1929, and 1931. The second approach was reform, first of the
machinery for dealing with landlord–tenant conflict, and ultimately, albeit
only partially, of the tenancy system.
Official harassment of unions and unionists took many forms. Terada
Noriaki recalled that the police would drop by his house unexpectedly,
asking him interminable questions and making it hard for him to meet
deadlines for the reports and articles he had to write.113 Elsewhere, offi-
cials prevented local newspapers from reporting the details of tenancy
disputes. Plainclothes policemen were sent into the countryside to learn
about union plans and, if possible, to discover damaging personal infor-
mation about union leaders. Auditors were dispatched to investigate the
account books of unions for possible misuse of funds.114
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 115
1111 Beginning in 1921 in Gifu, officials in a number of prefectures with
2111 active tenant movements issued revised police regulation (keisatsuhan
3 shobatsurei) to define and establish penalties for a wide variety of illegal
4 acts. Making collective action by tenants difficult, if not impossible, was
5111 clearly a major purpose of these regulations. The Shimane regulations,
6 for example, included provisions that called for the imprisonment and/or
7 fining of those who: participated in civil or criminal suits, non-litigation
8 cases, or any other matters in which they had no direct, personal interest,
9 or encouraged others to make complaints or file suits unless permitted
1011 by law; engaged in violent acts or incited others to such acts during the
1 course of a dispute (fungi); engaged in mass demonstrations or attempted
2 to negotiate en masse during the course of a dispute; employed gongs,
3111 drums, conch shells, or bugles to assemble or arouse others during the
4 course of a dispute, or used fireworks, bonfires, pine torches, or banners
5 for the same purpose; and incited or mobilized others not to pay taxes
6 or public imposts.115
7 Rather than preventing collective action, however, these regulations
8 appear on balance to have contributed to what can be termed the ‘modern-
9 ization’ of the methods unions employed. Anxious to avoid fines and
20111 imprisonment, which imposed a heavy burden both on union treasuries
1 and on themselves, union leaders were motivated to devise new pro-
2 cedures for conducting disputes and for creating and sustaining solidarity
3 among union members. Those they devised were not only legal but
4 more effective as well. To enable them to take part in suits and other
5111 matters in which they had no direct interest, union officials were formally
6 elected as bargaining agents by the tenants concerned and granted
7 power of attorney, duly executed and stamped, to act on the tenants’
8 behalf. Armed with these documents, they did not have to persuade land-
9 lords to deal with them; landlords were constrained to do so by the
30111 law itself.116 Instead of beating drums or lighting bonfires to assemble
1 or arouse union members, they used posters, newsletters, and lecture
2 meetings; when they needed to notify tenant unions in other communi-
3 ties that their help was needed – for example, to harvest crops before
4 they could be sold at auction – they sent out telegrams.117 Prevented from
5 organizing boycotts not only of local taxes but also, in some prefectures,
6 of local schools and such traditionally communal events as funerals,118
7 they concentrated on direct forms of exerting pressure on landlords and
8 on political action (such as getting tenants or their allies elected to
9 hamlet and village assemblies) to bring about desired changes in local
40111 policy. Instead of violence, which was hard to control and often created
1 resentments that were difficult to overcome, they emphasized disciplined
2111 and orderly behavior at union meetings and in disputes. Far from being
116 Ann Waswo
a drawback, that proved an asset. On the one hand, it enhanced the
respectability of union membership in the eyes of local tenant farmers
and helped prevent resignations. On the other hand, it deprived landlords
of an opportunity to evade the issues involved in disputes; having no
grounds on which to summon local police, they had to respond to tenant
demands.119
The final stage in the repressive approach to tenant unions began on
March 15, 1928, when more than 3,000 suspected communists were
arrested throughout Japan. Virtually all of the members of Nichinø’s exec-
utive committee were included among those arrested, much to the relief
of the current minister of agriculture, Yamamoto Tatsuo, who announced
to his officials that the countryside finally was being freed from the grip
of dangerous radicals.120 Further arrests followed in April 1929 and March
1931, the latter including such local union activists as Kimura Kamezø
and the leaders of the Zennø youth branch in Shimane.121
Not even Yamasaki escaped imprisonment. In February 1931 he was
sentenced to eight months in jail for interfering with a government offi-
cial in the performance of his duties (kømu shikkø bøgai). His crime,
committed in December 1926, had been to grab hold of a bailiff to prevent
him from terminating an auction of standing crops that had been ordered
by a local court to compensate the owners of the land in question for
their tenants’ refusal to pay rents. Yamasaki had mobilized nearby union
members to attend the auction, and they so dominated the proceedings
that the crops were being sold, to the tenants, for only a fraction of their
market value. When the bailiff realized what was happening, he started
to leave the scene. It was then that Yamasaki grabbed him, in effect to
make him perform his duty, not to prevent him from doing so. Not even
Yamasaki’s legal skills, however, were adequate to mounting a successful
defense in the repressive atmosphere that prevailed, although he was
able to prolong the proceedings against him by means of appeals for over
four years.122
The repressive approach to unions accorded fully with the view,
discussed earlier, that unions were the product of alien forces that had
penetrated rural society and contaminated tenant farmers with subversive
ideas. In that sense, the arrests of union leaders represented an attempt
to sanitize the countryside. Bureaucrats appear to have recognized,
however, that removing leaders from the scene would only provide a
palliative, not a cure. In addition to repression, they also employed reform.
In the early 1920s, at the same time that they were harassing existing
tenant unions, bureaucrats had tried to enlist landlords in efforts to prevent
new unions from being organized. Three measures had been recom-
mended: that landlords voluntarily reduce rents in order to deprive tenants
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 117
1111 of an issue on which disputes, and hence unions, might be based; that
2111 they refer any disputes that did occur to local agricultural associations
3 (nøkai) for resolution; and that they organize their tenants into concilia-
4 tion associations (kyøchø kumiai) to promote mutual understanding and
5111 goodwill.123 The responses these recommendations generated were far
6 from gratifying. Few landlords lowered rents of their own volition. Rather
7 than submitting disputes to nøkai, they continued trying to settle them
8 independently or in concert with other landlords. Although some land-
9 lords organized conciliation associations, at no time before the mid-1930s
1011 did those associations rival tenant unions in either number or member-
1 ship.124 As officials in Shimane reported with a touch of exasperation,
2 landlords remained indifferent to all warnings until after problems with
3111 their tenants had arisen, by which time it was usually too late to prevent
4 the formation of tenant unions.125
5 The recommendations made to landlords by bureaucrats had been pred-
6 icated on the assumption that landlords would rally to the cause of village
7 and social harmony, that is, that landlords were reliable agents of state
8 policy who would transcend private interests to work for the common
9 good. Given evidence that landlords had a considerably less disinterested
20111 sense of vocation, bureaucrats began to realize that the countryside itself,
1 not just external influences upon it, required their attention.
2 The first manifestation of this realization was the tenancy concilia-
3 tion law of 1924. Instead of relying on landlords and local nøkai, the
4 government established new machinery, under the direct control of the
5111 bureaucracy, to resolve tenancy disputes.126 Next, in 1925, bureaucrats
6 proposed, and the Diet enacted, regulations to promote the establishment
7 of owner-cultivators; low-interest loans were made available to tenants
8 to enable them to buy the land they cultivated, in what amounted to an
9 attempt, however inadequately funded, to prevent tenants from joining
30111 unions or to encourage union members to resign.127 The industrial asso-
1 ciation law (sangyø kumiai hø) of 1900, which despite its name had a
2 greater impact on farming than on factories, was revised to make it easier
3 for communities to establish consumer cooperatives for the purchase of
4 basic necessities. Finally, in 1939, as the nation mobilized for war, bureau-
5 crats were able to overcome the objections of landed interests in the Diet
6 and secure passage of a law to establish fair rents (tekisei kosakuryø); a
7 ceiling of one koku per tan in rent was imposed on top-grade land, with
8 rents on lesser grades of land to be determined accordingly. Both land-
9 lords and tenants were to participate in determining rent levels.128
40111 Implicit in these measures was the acknowledgement by bureaucrats
1 that tenant unions, although unacceptable as organizations, had served
2111 legitimate needs among tenant farmers. To eradicate unions those needs
118 Ann Waswo
had to be met in some other way. This was as close to equity as tenants
were able to get until the postwar land reform.

Notes
1 Kenneth Pyle, ‘The Technology of Japanese Nationalism,’ Journal of Asian
Studies, 33 (November 1973), 58–60, 65; Fukutake Tadashi, Japanese Rural
Society, trans. Ronald Dore (Tokyo, 1967), pp. 169–70.
2 As I will discuss later, bureaucrats believed in early Taishø that landlords
acted on behalf of rural society as a whole. Not until the 1920s did they begin
to perceive that landlords, too, had class interests that landlord unions (jinushi
kumiai) were designed to protect.
3 Data on unions and union membership appear in Nøchi seido shiryø hensan
iinkai, Nøchi seido shiryø sh¨sei (Tokyo, 1969), 3: 514, 524 (hereafter cited
as NSSS). Data on the number of tenant households appear in annual editions
of Teikoku tøkei nenkan.
4 NSSS, p. 514.
5 Richard Smethurst, for example, observes that ‘Farmers’ unions at the peak
of their organizational activity enrolled only a minuscule segment of the
nation’s tenants’ (emphasis added): A Social Basis for Prewar Japanese
Militarism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974),
p. 146. I do not agree that the segment was minuscule, but in the absence of
agreed-upon standards for evaluating levels of popular unrest I can only assert
my opinion. I think that a more fruitful approach to evaluating Japanese tenant
unions is suggested by Henry A. Landsberger in his essay on ‘The Role of
Peasant Movements and Revolts in Development: An Analytical Framework,’
I.L.R. Reprint Series, No. 236 (Ithaca, 1968), in which emphasis is placed on
the characteristics, not the quantity of protest. I have found Landsberger’s
framework very helpful in my research.
6 ‘Yonaoshi in Aizu,’ in Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected
Tradition, ed. T. Najita and J.V. Koschmann (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982), pp. 164–76.
7 For a brief discussion of tenant protest before the 1920s see Ann Waswo,
Japanese Landlords: The Decline of a Rural Elite (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1977), pp. 21–3; Irwin Scheiner, ‘The Mindful
Peasant: Sketches for a Study of Rebellion,’ Journal of Asian Studies, 32
(August 1973), pp. 579–91.
8 Usually bylaws made no mention of a time limit for the union’s existence,
although in some cases a period of ten or twenty years was specified. See
Nøshømushø nømukyoku, ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai ni kansuru chøsa
(1924),’ reprinted in NSSS, p. 31. Of the 4,650 unions in existence in 1932,
2,601 (56 percent) had been established prior to 1927 and 620 (13 percent)
has been established prior to 1922; NSSS, p. 516.
9 They also employed a variety of new means, which I will discuss at a later
point. For a detailed explication of protest methods, both old and new, see
Mori Kiichi, Kosaku søgi senjutsu (Tokyo, 1928).
10 See Vlastos, ‘Yonaoshi in Aizu.’
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 119
1111 11 The Ministry of Agriculture undertook its first general survey of tenant unions
2111 in cooperation with the Imperial Agricultural Association in 1916. In 1920 it
3 began making its own surveys, although it relied on quantitative data on
unions compiled by the Home Ministry until 1925. Until 1922 the Home
4 Ministry was also the sole source of quantitative data on tenancy disputes.
5111 Thereafter the Ministry of Agriculture kept its own tabulations, consistently
6 reporting substantially more disputes than did the Home Ministry, just as,
7 after 1925, it consistently reported a slightly greater number of tenant unions.
8 No satisfactory explanation for the discrepancies between the data reported
9 by these two ministries has yet been uncovered. Conversation with Nishida
1011 Yoshiaki, Tokyo University. See also Nømin undøshi kenky¨kai, Nihon nømin
undøshi (Tokyo, 1961), pp. 665, 672, 685, 883 (hereafter cited as NNUS).
1 12 Calculated from data in Nørinshø nømukyoku, ‘Jinushi kosakunin kumiai ni
2 kansuru chøsa (1926),’ reprinted in NSSS, pp. 54, 59–63.
3111 13 ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, pp. 30–1. In some cases membership
4 was open to owner-cultivators as well, or to nonfarmers approved by the
5 membership as a whole. Less frequently membership was restricted to indi-
6 viduals who tenanted at least a specified area of land (such as 2 tan) or to
7 those of ‘good character’ (hinkø høsei naru mono) only. 10 tan = 1 chø =
2.5 acres.
8 14 NSSS, p. 520. It is possible that bureaucrats used the term øaza to describe
9 hamlets (buraku) that were not officially part of the administrative structure
20111 of the countryside.
1 15 ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, pp. 31–2.
2 16 Ibid., p. 32.
3 17 Nøshømushø nømukyoku, ‘Kosaku kumiai ni kansuru chøsa (1921),’ reprinted
4 in NSSS, p. 599; Takahashi Iichirø and Shirakawa Kiyoshi, eds., Nøchi kaikaku
to jinushi sei (Tokyo, 1955), p. 101. For examples of union leaders, see
5111 Hayashi Y¨ichi, ‘Shoki kosaku søgi no tenkai to Taishøki nøson seiji jøkyø
6 no ichi køsatsu,’ Rekishigaku kenky¨, No. 442 (March 1977), pp. 1–16; Suzuki
7 Masayuki, ‘Nichi-Ro sengo no nøson mondai no tenkai,’ Rekishigaku kenky¨
8 (1974 special issue), pp. 150–61.
9 18 ‘Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa (1921),’ NSSS, p. 600. 100 sen = 1 yen.
30111 19 ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, pp. 32–3.
1 20 Ibid., p. 26; Nørinshø nømukyoku, Jinushi kosakunin kumiai kiyaku jirei
(Tokyo, 1926), p. 1. The latter report contains many examples of union bylaws.
2 For a ‘representative’ sample, incorporating all of the most common features
3 found in bylaws, see Nøshømushø nømukyoku, Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa,
4 1 (Tokyo, 1922), 211–17.
5 21 Unless otherwise noted, the source of the following description of union activ-
6 ities is ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, pp. 33–5.
7 22 Tenants who violated these stipulations generally were subject to fines or
8 ostracism.
23 For a discussion of rice inspection, see Waswo, Japanese Landlords, pp.
9 42–56. To compensate landlords for the loss or soilage of rent rice during
40111 transit and storage, tenants in many parts of the country had long been required
1 to pay an extra measure of rice (known variously as sashimai, komimai,
2111 kanmai, etc.) per bale of rent. In late Meiji, many landlords began requiring
120 Ann Waswo
that tenants use double-layer bales for rent payments instead of the single-
layer bales that had been employed in the past. Tenant objections to these
requirements will be discussed at a later point.
24 See also Mori, Kosaku søgi senjutsu, pp. 32–56; Jinushi kosakunin kumiai
kiyaku jirei, pp. 2–4.
25 Unions also advocated educational reforms and the abolition of ‘oppressive’
taxes; Jinushi kosakunin kumiai kiyaku jirei, p. 4.
26 See, for example, ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, pp. 21, 24.
Bureaucrats later cited the victory of the British Labour party as a cause of
increasing political activity by unions; ‘Jinushi kosakunin kumiai ni kansure
chøsa,’ NSSS, p. 54.
27 Quoted in Kawamura Nozomu, ‘Kosaku søgiki ni okeru sonraku taisei,’
Sonraku shakai kenky¨ nenpø, No. 7 (Tokyo, 1960), p. 108.
28 Fukutake, Japanese Rural Society, pp. 86, 133, 214; George M. Foster,
‘Interpersonal Relations in Peasant Society,’ Human Organization, 19
(1960–61), 174–8.
29 Three excellent case studies by Nishida Yoshiaki, two concerning a district
in Niigata Prefecture and one a village in Yamanashi Prefecture, examine this
issue in detail: ‘Shønø keiei no hatten to kosaku søgi,’ Tochi seido shigaku,
No. 38 (1968), pp. 24–41; ‘Kosaku søgi no tenkai,’ in Meiji Taishø kyødoshi
kenky¨ hø, ed. by Furushima Toshio et al. (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 346–69; and
‘Kosaku søgi no tenkai to jisakunø søsetsu iji seisaku,’ Hitotsubashi ronsø,
60 (1968), 524–46.
30 Nishida, ‘Shønø keiei,’ p. 25.
31 Ushiyama Keiji, Nøminsø bunkai no køzø, senzenki: Niigata ken Kambara
nøson no bunseki (Tokyo, 1970), pp. 100–1. The author presents a detailed
discussion of unions in ‘headless’ communities on pp. 97–103; the problems
faced by unions in communities with landlords in residence are discussed on
pp. 130–8. For a general discussion of absentee landlords and the effects of
absenteeism on landlord–tenant relations, see Waswo, Japanese Landlords,
pp. 81–93.
32 Bureaucrats observed in 1924 that the involvement of unions in cooperative
activities was ‘something to note,’ but they made no further comment on the
subject. ‘Honpø ni okeru nøgyø dantai,’ NSSS, p. 35. As I will discuss later,
I think bureaucrats were slowly becoming aware that the breakdown of other
institutions designed to meet farmers’ needs had contributed to the growth of
tenant unions.
33 Tenants in a given community did not have to experience every step of this
process themselves, but could profit from the example of tenants in neigh-
boring communities. For discussion of the ways in which tenants could and/or
did discover the utility of unions on their own, see Ushiyama, Nøminsø bunkai,
pp. 109–13; Takahashi and Shirakawa, Nøchi kaikaku to jinushi sei, pp. 86–9;
Mori, Kosaku søgi senjutsu, pp. 4–5, 54.
34 Examples appear in George O. Totten, ‘Labor and Agrarian Disputes in Japan
Following World War I,’ Economic Development and Cultural Change, 9,
part 2 (October 1960), 204; NNUS, pp. 890–902. See also the discussion that
follows on the tenant movement in Iwami.
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 121
1111 35 Ushiyama, Nøminsø bunkai, pp. 111–12, 120–23; Suzuki, Nichi-Ro sengo no
2111 nøson mondai,’ pp. 150–61. See also the discussion that follows on the union
3 movement in Izumo.
4 36 That the case study I am about to present is typical in any statistical sense
of developments in Japan as a whole is highly unlikely. I have selected it
5111 primarily because it is well-documented, enabling one to penetrate the
6 anonymity that surrounds the subject of tenant protest and get some idea of
7 the issues as tenants and their leaders perceived them. For a justification of
8 the case study method, not as a basis for generalizing about the whole of a
9 phenomenon but as a laboratory for examining social processes that affect all
1011 constituent parts to one degree or another, see Maurice R. Stein, The Eclipse
1 of Community: An Interpretation of American Studies (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1960), pp. 94–113.
2 37 Compiled from data in Shimane ken nørinbu, nøchi kaikaku ka, Shimane ken
3111 nøchi kaikaku shi (Hirata, 1959), pp. 104, 106–8 (hereafter cited as SKNKS).
4 Data on the number of tenant households are from Shimane ken tøkeisho,
5 1922 (Matsue, 1923), p. 7.
6 38 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ quoted in Yoshioka Yoshinori, ‘Shimane ken nømin
7 undøshi,’ NNUS, p. 818.
8 39 ‘Taishø Shøwa nømin undø ni kansuru zadankai’ (hereafter cited as
‘Zadankai’), in SKNKS, pp. 316–17. Tenant union leaders in Nøgi and Yatsuka
9 gun took part in two separate symposia in 1956, of which this is the tran-
20111 script. Bylaws of two early tenant unions in Shimane, one established in 1898
1 and the other in 1902, appear in SKNKS, pp. 118–20, nn. 11, 12.
2 40 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 818.
3 41 Ibid., pp. 818–19.
4 42 Nøshømushø nømukyoku, Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa, 2 (Tokyo, 1922),
344; SKNKS, pp. 123–5, 130–3 n. 7.
5111
43 Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa, 2, pp. 344, 339; ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS,
6 pp. 818–19. Faced with the prospect of having to pay rents in rice of at least
7 third-class quality (or pay a penalty in rice), tenants in a village in neigh-
8 boring Tottori prefecture protested that 60 percent of the rice they grew was
9 of fourth-class quality; SKNKS, pp. 123–4. For data of a similar sort from
30111 Gifu prefecture, see NNUS, p. 651.
1 44 Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa, 2, pp. 341, 342. Another objection was that
the area of fields was now measured accurately, depriving tenants of the
2
‘slack’ they had enjoyed in the past; ibid., p. 349.
3 45 SKNKS, pp. 113, 121 n. 14.
4 46 Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa, 2, pp. 344, 347–53.
5 47 See the general discussion of these points in Landsberger, ‘The Role of Peasant
6 Movements and Revolts,’ pp. 72–5.
7 48 Itø Kikunosuke, ed., Shimane ken jinmei jiten (Matsue, 1970), p. 267;
8 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 325. Yamasaki died in 1964. Portions of what follows
are based on autograph letters written in the late 1950s by Yamasaki to
9
Yoshioka Yoshinori. To distinguish between the unpublished and published
40111 portions of the letters, which I will also be referring to below, I will cite the
1 former as ‘Yamasaki MS’ and the latter as ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS. I owe
2111 thanks to Mr. Yoshioka for allowing me to photocopy the letters.
122 Ann Waswo
49 ‘Yamasaki MS’; ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 325.
50 ‘Yamasaki MS’; ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 325–6.
51 Vetch, used as cattle fodder, a diuretic, and an antipyretic, was a major
secondary crop in Izumo.
52 ‘Yamasaki MS’; ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 326.
53 Ibid., p. 317; Yoshioka, NNUS, p. 816.
54 Ibid., p. 815; ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 317.
55 Yoshioka, NNUS, p. 816.
56 ‘Yamasaki MS.’
57 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 816.
58 ‘Yamasaki MS.’
59 Yamasaki’s testimony before the Kosaku Chøsakai, to be discussed later, as
reported in Kosakunin, October 10, 1926, p. 3.
60 Yoshioka, NNUS, p. 817; SKNKS, pp. 153, 228.
61 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, pp. 817–18.
62 Ibid., p. 817.
63 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 320, 325. Yamasaki described the establishment of
the Nøgi federation as a ‘revolt of youth against age.’ ‘Yamasaki MS.’ Another
characteristic leaders had in common, which can be inferred from these exam-
ples, was an above-average level of literacy.
64 SKNKS, p. 192 n. 2. The proclamation of the Tenant Federation of Yatsuka
District, which does not refer explicitly to the emperor, appears ibid., pp.
200–3.
65 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 324. For examples of subsequent scholarly opinion,
see Hayashi, ‘Shoki kosaku søgi no tenkai,’ especially p. 5; Yoshioka, NNUS,
p. 821. Profiles of Yokota and Sugai appear ibid., pp. 1157–62.
66 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 324. For the first issue Terada composed the slogan,
‘Until the light shines brightly on the countryside.’ Beneath it appeared a
crude drawing of ‘tenant farmers pushing the globe toward a bright future.’
I think the symbolism here is significant: tenant farmers were to achieve their
goal by their own actions.
67 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 819. Each issue sold for one sen; a year’s
subscription, including postage, cost 50 sen. Issues for February through
December 1926 are on file at Høsei daigaku Øhara shakai mondai kenky¨jo,
Tokyo.
68 Kosakunin, February 10, 1926, p. 6.
69 Polite verb forms were used in articles addressed to women; see, for example,
Kosakunin, July 10, 1926, p. 3.
70 Kosakunin, February 10, 1926, p. 6. Among other contributions from readers
was a rice-planting (taue) song composed by the women’s association of a
hamlet in Araijima village entitled ‘Landlords’ Punishment.’ In rough trans-
lation: ‘Landlords get rich and fat by squeezing tenants/Then Heaven punishes
them with illness/They waste their money on fancy doctors/But that won’t
cure them/They should try being kind to their tenants instead.’ Kosakunin,
June 10, 1926, p. 1.
71 Kosakunin, June 10, 1926, p. 3.
72 ‘[It] can be done before breakfast’; Kosakunin, March 10, 1926, p. 4.
73 Kosakunin, May 10, 1926, p. 1.
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 123
1111 74 Kosakunin, March 10, 1926, p. 1.
2111 75 Kosakunin, June 10, 1926, p. 1. What I have rendered in translation as ‘idle
3 landlords’ was expressed in the original as norari kurari to asonde kurashite
iru landlords, not as kiseiteki (parasitic) landlords. The latter, more abstract
4 term was popular among contemporary leftists but was avoided by Yamasaki.
5111 76 Kosakunin, March 10, 1926, p. 3.
6 77 Kosakunin, March 10, 1926, p. 2.
7 78 Kosakunin, April 10, 1926, p. 3.
8 79 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 819.
9 80 ‘Køsei naru kosakuryø,’ published in 1924 in the journal Kaizø.
1011 81 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 325; ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 819; 10 to = 1
koku = 5.1 bushels (US dry measure).
1 82 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 819; see SKNKS, pp. 169–74 for examples of
2 these accounts.
3111 83 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 335. Yamasaki regarded Nichinø’s advocacy of 30
4 percent rent reductions on all tenanted land as ‘unrealistically mechanical’;
5 ibid., p. 323.
6 84 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, pp. 831–2. For a description of a difficult case,
7 see ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 336–7.
85 The federation retained a lawyer, but according to Yamasaki gave him more
8 business than money; ibid., p. 327. Training courses and workshops are
9 discussed ibid., p. 323; Yoshioka, NNUS, pp. 825, 826.
20111 86 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 323, 329–30. Yamasaki observed that some land-
1 lords, receiving a court summons for the first time in their lives as a result
2 of action taken by their tenants, felt that ‘the world had been turned upside
3 down.’
4 87 Ibid., p. 332. See also Mori, Kosaku søgi senjutsu, pp. 77–104.
88 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 327. No tenant looked forward to crop failure, but
5111 the utility of a minor decline in yields in pressing for concessions was widely
6 recognized enough to be proverbial: kosaku ni wa fusaku no hø ga toku datta
7 (in tenancy poor harvests pay off); quoted in Takahashi and Shirakawa, Nøchi
8 kaikaku to jinushi sei, p. 97. I think this attitude helps to explain why poor
9 harvests were reported as the major cause of disputes in the 1920s. When
30111 yields declined, tenants had grounds to seek improvement in the terms of
1 tenancy. Opportunity, not desperation, motivated their actions.
89 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 323, 327. Yamasaki was not the only tenant leader
2 to perceive advantages in the conciliation law. A union official in Niigata
3 observed; ‘Conciliation is like [the game of] pole-pushing. The side with
4 patience and strength in reserve wins. It’s the side that can make the last
5 strong push after a lot of feints that gets the victory’; quoted in Mori, Kosaku
6 søgi senjutsu, p. 103.
7 90 SKNKS, p. 176 n. 11.
8 91 Kosakunin, June 10, 1926, p. 3.
92 Kosakunin, December 10, 1926, p. 1 of special section. Apparently many of
9 the cooperatives that were established in 1926 went bankrupt within a few
40111 years; SKNKS, p. 222.
1 93 Kosakunin, July 10, 1926, p. 3 and June 10, 1926, p. 3. The June article
2111 emphasized the spontaneous (jihatsuteki) nature of the undertaking: ‘It is not
124 Ann Waswo
like other efforts at cooperative farming that only exist on paper and whose
leaders devote their time to getting money from the government.’
94 For an example of how tenants won such voting rights, see Kawamura,
‘Kosaku søgiki ni okeru sonraku taisei,’ pp. 119–26.
95 Nørinshø nømukyoku, ‘Taishø j¨yon nendo chøsonkai giin kaisen ni okeru
kosakunin gawa jøsei ni kansuru chøsa,’ reprinted in NSSS, pp. 68, 70 and
72 (tables 1, 3, and 5). Tenants previously had occupied a total of 3,669
village assembly seats out of 42,738; ibid., pp. 71, 73 (tables 4, 6).
96 Ibid., pp. 68–73 (tables 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6). As in Shimane, 86 percent of the
tenants elected to village assemblies in 1925 had ‘no connection’ with tenant
unions; ibid., p. 70 (table 3). Why more tenant union members did not run
for or succeed in obtaining village assembly seats throughout Japan is an
interesting question that merits further study.
97 Kosakunin, February 10, 1926, pp. 1, 2. Recommendations for tax reform
included the elimination of taxes on bicycles and carts, items that many tenants
possessed, and the imposition of taxes on such ‘luxuries’ as gardens, villas,
and concubines. Chief among the educational improvements called for was
the creation of more lower-level agricultural continuation schools to benefit
the children of tenant farmers.
98 SKNKS, p. 220.
99 Kosakunin, May 10, 1926, p. 3.
100 Ibid.
101 Yoshioka, NNUS, pp. 820, 830–1.
102 Ibid., pp. 827–9. Toyowara returned to Tokyo in June 1927. Ogawa moved
to Osaka to work in Nichinø headquarters at the end of that year; ibid.,
p. 832.
103 Ibid., pp. 837–8.
104 Ibid. pp. 833–6, 839–42.
105 Ibid., pp. 842–3.
106 ‘Yamasaki Memo,’ NNUS, p. 838.
107 Ibid., p. 832.
108 Yoshioka, NNUS, pp. 844–46.
109 Summaries of their remarks, and the remarks of other witnesses, most of them
landlords, appear in ‘Kosaku chøsakai tokubetsu iinkai gijiroku,’ in NSSS,
Supplement II, 157–257.
110 Since no complete transcript of his remarks exists, what follows is based on
the summary, ibid., pp. 217–20, and on his report of his testimony as published
in Kosakunin, October 10, 1926, p. 3.
111 ‘Kosaku chøsakai gijiroku,’ p. 220; Kosakunin, October 10, 1926, p. 3.
112 Bernard Silberman, ‘The Bureaucratic State in Japan: The Problem of
Authority and Legitimacy,’ pp. 242–6. In Conflict in Modern Japanese
History, ed. T. Najita and J.V. Koschmann (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982).
113 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, p. 326.
114 The above examples are from Gifu prefecture, as reported in NNUS, pp.
669–70, 689, 690–1.
115 The complete text of these regulations, revised in November 1924, appears
in SKNKS, pp. 177–8 n. 13.
 Japanese tenant unions in the 1920s 125
1111 116 Mori, Kosaku søgi senjutsu, pp. 44–7.
2111 117 For an example, see NNUS, p. 530.
3 118 Ibid., pp. 663, 667, 669–70.
4 119 Mori, Kosaku søgi senjutsu, pp. 9, 13–18, 64.
120 Yamamoto’s remarks are quoted in Hayashi, ‘Shoki kosaku søgi no tenkai,’
5111 p. 15.
6 121 Yoshioka, NNUS, p. 846.
7 122 Ibid., p. 830; ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 334, 336–8.
8 123 Hayashi, ‘Shoki kosaku søgi no tenkai,’ pp. 3, 10. Yamasaki believed that
9 conciliation associations posed a serious threat to the tenant movement and
1011 criticized them at every opportunity.
1 124 Data on the number and membership of conciliation associations appear in
NSSS, pp. 540–1, 550–1. In 1929 there were 1,986 conciliation associations
2 (less than half the number of tenant unions) with a total membership of 244,943
3111 (77.6 percent of the membership of tenant unions). Not until 1936 were there
4 more members of conciliation associations than there were members of tenant
5 unions.
6 125 Kosaku søgi ni kansuru chøsa, 2, p. 347.
7 126 Ogura Takekazu, Tochi rippø no shiteki køsatsu (Tokyo, 1951), pp. 395–425.
8 127 For a discussion of the impact of these loans, see Nishida, ‘Kosaku søgi no
tenkai,’ pp. 537–40.
9 128 ‘Zadankai,’ SKNKS, pp. 334, 335–6; Ogura, Tochi rippø, pp. 720–32.
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6 Building the model village
Rural revitalization and the
Great Depression
Kerry Smith

Introduction
It must be almost second nature by now to view rural Japan as perched
on the brink of disaster. The list of economic crises, social ills and eco-
logical calamities that have afflicted farming communities is a long
one. From the start of the modern era, as this volume certainly helps
illustrate, towns and villages throughout Japan were subject to a series
of difficult transitions, from the sharp shocks of the Matsukata Defla-
tion of the early 1880s to the subtler challenges of industrial capitalism
and the rise of the nation’s cities. The increased visibility of tenancy and
tenant movements around the time of the First World War highlighted
growing divisions of wealth and power within villages, and between
commercially successful regions and those less able to break old habits.
Joined to these economic problems was a series of programs and policies
designed by the state to protect farmers and their communities. The intro-
duction of industrial cooperatives and agricultural associations, local
improvement in its various forms and tenancy conciliation laws all grew
out of elite and bureaucratic concerns over the fate of the countryside.
That even the postwar land reform and farm subsidies can be understood
as part of the ongoing attempt to address gaps between agriculture and
industry, and between changing agricultural technologies and static land-
holdings, speaks to the intransigence of the problems facing Japan’s
farmers.
This seemingly permanent crisis in farming masks the extent to which
the 1930s and the war years reflect a new set of circumstances for rural
Japanese. What this chapter and the two that follow will do is explore
some of the ways the Great Depression and the Second World War trans-
formed rural communities. Together they suggest that local and national
responses to the era’s crises marked important departures from past prac-
tices, and helped set the stage for the post-surrender reconstruction of the
 Building the model village 127
1111 countryside and agriculture. One such departure, for example, was the
2111 new emphasis on emigration as both a solution to the ‘farm village
3 problem’ and as an element of national policy. The connections between
4 social stability, the idealized farm village, and Japan’s imperial aspira-
5111 tions had never been so clearly drawn as they were in the aftermath of
6 the 1931 Manchurian Incident. Japan’s deepening involvement in China
7 after 1937 led to even grander roles for colonist-farmers. The chapters
8 by Wilson and Mori examine the implications and realities of emigration
9 policies in the 1930s and 1940s, and suggest how significant these devel-
1011 opments were to the nation’s conception of the countryside, and rural
1 citizens’ sense of their place in the nation. The repercussions of these
2 policies would extend well beyond the emigrant community itself.
3111 Imagining what a fresh start in Manchuria or Korea might look
4 like was one facet of a broader effort to improve rural life in the 1930s.
5 The multiple crises at the start of the decade highlighted how much the
6 countryside had already been changed by years of economic hard times
7 and demographic shifts. Local leaders and state officials had to scramble
8 to replace old models of social stability with new and more resilient
9 ones. In mid-1932, these multiple models coalesced into a single frame-
20111 work for rural reform. From that summer until 1941, the Farm, Mountain
1 and Fishing Village Economic Revitalization Campaign, or Nøsangyoson
2 keizai køsei undø, provided a national template for local efforts to respond
3 to the Great Depression. Almost four-fifths of Japan’s villages partici-
4 pated in the campaign at some point, and although the degree to which
5111 residents embraced its methods and rhetoric could vary from place to
6 place and year to year, themes and experiences common to many com-
7 munities are not hard to identify. This chapter explores the campaign’s
8 impact and its implications for our understanding of rural Japan (see
9 Smith 2001 for an extended analysis of these issues). That exploration
30111 begins with an overview of the circumstances unique to the crises of the
1 1930s.
2
3
Hard times
4
5 Otoyo: Has it really been five years?
6 Yøsuke: And another five years to go. Just a little longer now
7 ...
8 Sh¨saku: (A little angrily) You say ‘five years’ like it was nothing.
9 That was no ordinary five years!
40111 Yøsuke: Well, I guess it was the same all over. Still, you must be
1 feeling a little better about your situation by now, right?
2111 Otoyo: (Nodding) Our debt has been reduced by half . . .
128 Kerry Smith

Sh¨saku: And yet think of the difficulties our family had to go

through to get to this point. (Looking down at his hands
and feet.) I wonder if we’ll be able to keep this up for
another five years . . .
(Nukada and Takagi 1936: 67).

It might be hard to imagine busy men and women taking the time to
stage this play for their fellow farmers, but at least some villagers did
(see Figure 6.1) and it is easy to see why the editors of the magazine
Ie no hikari urged them to do so. The drama is set in a generic rural
village in the mid-1930s; the earliest dialogue, some of which is excerpted
above, explains to readers that, at the time of the events depicted in this
scene, the deeply impoverished family was only halfway through a ten-
year plan to restore the family’s finances, pay back its substantial debt,
and diversify its crop holdings. Mother, father and their two sons describe
the depths to which the family has sunk since the start of the depression,
and reveal that their sole hope for revival lies in the continued pursuit
of the aforementioned recovery plan. Both the struggle already endured
and the hard work ahead are held up as difficult but necessary steps
toward better times.
The tension in the play is not over whether to honor the family’s oblig-
ations, but over how to do so, and under whose leadership. The father’s
conservative approach to coping with the depression’s effects is chal-
lenged by his sons. The eldest calls for radical reforms of how they
go about the business of farming; his younger brother privately contem-
plates abandoning the farm altogether. To further complicate matters, the
daughter of one of the village’s absentee landlords drops in from the city
for a series of encounters with the brothers, during which she openly
expresses her contempt for their way of life. Why work so hard for
so little, she asks, when the city beckons? The plot of ‘Sandanbatake no
kyødai’ (‘The Brothers of the Three-tan Field’), such as it is, explores
how the family eventually triumphs over these multiple challenges.
Readers no doubt found it edifying on several levels, not least because
the play seemed to address many of the issues then confronting rural
readers of magazines like Ie no hikari. The severity of the depression’s
effects, the apparent demise of rural communities, and the benefits of
diligence and thoughtful responses in the face of both these crises were
themes local leaders and magazine editors alike faced again and again
in the 1930s. The play offers a useful starting point for a discussion of
some of the more significant changes under way in rural life in the 1930s.
Let me begin with the mechanics of the economic crisis itself.
1111
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8 Figure 6.1 A performance of the Economic Revitalization drama ‘Sandanbatake
9 no kyødai’ by members of the industrial cooperative in Osogi village
40111 (Nishitama gun, Tokyo).
1 Source: The photos originally appeared in Ie no hikari 12.4 (April 1936), p. 10.
2111
130 Kerry Smith
Explaining why prices for farm products fell as fast and as far as
they did during the Great Depression is reasonably straightforward; under-
standing how farmers’ lives changed as a result much less so. Agricul-
ture’s primary economic problems in the 1930s were the product of three
related developments. Wall Street’s 1929 collapse pulled the rug out from
under US consumer spending, and thus on purchases of imported Japanese
silk. As prices for raw and processed silk plummeted, payments to rural
cocoon producers eventually did the same, sharply reducing a key source
of income for many of the nation’s farmers. The same mechanism led to
wage cuts and mass lay-offs in the nation’s textile factories, which in good
times employed large numbers of young women from rural communities.
A second development originated at home, but overlapped disastrously
with the economic downturn abroad. The Minseitø party’s return to power
in 1929 was due in part to the new cabinet’s promises to put the country
back on the gold standard. Such a step would place Japan on an equal
footing with the other advanced economies. Japan had joined them in
leaving the standard during the First World War, but a series of finan-
cial problems (including the Great Kantø Earthquake of 1923) had
prevented an equally timely return. The new Hamaguchi cabinet held out
participation in the gold standard as a sign of international prestige and
economic strength, and while noting that going back on the standard
would almost certainly send the economy into a mild recession as Japanese
exports became significantly more expensive on world markets, finance
minister Inoue Junnosuke and others assured the nation that any such
phenomenon would be short-lived. Brushing aside initial concerns about
what was happening in the United States and Europe that autumn, the
government and businesses alike began trimming budgets and staff in
late 1929 in preparation for a January 1930 return to the gold standard.
The effects of those intentional efforts to slow the domestic economy
were soon amplified by the unanticipated impact of the Great Depression
and a slowing world economy. Instead of the mild downturn politicians
had promised and business leaders had prepared for, the nation was instead
visited by unprecedented difficulties in almost every sector. The ranks
of the newly unemployed swelled to include not just textile workers,
but skilled laborers from heavy industry and laid-off white collar
‘sarari-men.’ Factory closings and the surreptitious flight of insolvent
business owners were soon common enough events as to go almost un-
remarked.
A third and final factor affecting the economic well-being of the farmers
was their own productivity. For years many had tried to offset the real
and anticipated drop in commodity prices by raising even more of what-
ever it was they grew. A gradual increase in yields during the 1920s
 Building the model village 131
1111 culminated in a record rice harvest in 1930. (Silk cocoon production
2111 had been similarly ramped up in the late 1920s and early 1930s.) Once
3 the government announced its estimate of the size of that autumn’s crop,
4 rice prices, already on a downward slide paralleling that of other basic
5111 commodities, dropped even more precipitously. By early in 1931 a unit
6 of rice was selling for about half as much as it had the year before – the
7 average price of farm products in general fell by about 45 percent between
8 1929 and 1931. The countryside’s willingness to kept the nation supplied
9 with rice and other commodities even at those desperately low prices
1011 worked to the advantage of factory workers and other wage laborers, and
1 helped fuel the relatively rapid recovery of the industrial sector from the
2 grip of the depression. Rural communities had a much longer wait before
3111 they were able to realize the full benefits of their own hard work. Prices
4 for rice and silk, and thus the income they generated for farmers, remained
5 at pre-depression levels until long after the rest of the economy had turned
6 around (Shimizu 1987: 156; Nakamura 1988: 307).
7 Lost income and low prices were of course serious matters for farmers,
8 and the extent and persistence of these factors were part of what made
9 this downturn different from others in recent memory. Yet they were just
20111 a part – the list of reasons the crises of the early Showa era mark a signif-
1 icant shift in the countryside’s relationship with the rest of the nation is
2 a long one. Demographic changes are certainly part of the picture, as the
3 growth of the nation’s urban centers in the 1920s and 1930s went
4 unmatched by rural communities. Only about one Japanese in eight lived
5111 in a community of more than 100,000 in 1930; by 1935, one in four did
6 (Tasaki 1989: 179). A similar shift was under way in the economy, as
7 the industrial sector gradually surpassed farming as the primary producer
8 of the nation’s wealth. Such trends were evident well before the depres-
9 sion struck, but the sharp shocks to the agricultural sector and the scrutiny
30111 of village life that followed highlighted the gaps between town and country
1 in no uncertain terms.
2 Rural citizens were also better informed of these changes, and of their
3 own vulnerabilities. The effects of the economic downturn and new
4 avenues of public discourse reached the countryside almost simultane-
5 ously. By the time ‘Sandanbatake no kyødai’ appeared in 1936, magazines
6 like Ie no hikari, Kingu and others were assiduously cultivating rural
7 audiences. Ie no hikari was one of the most widely read publications in
8 the countryside. In its best years the magazine reached close to one in
9 every three rural households. Circulation topped 200,000 in 1932, and
40111 broke the one million mark only three years later (Itagaki 1992: 54–6;
1 Iwasaki 1976: 240, 244; Adachi 1973: 106). Print journals, film (atten-
2111 dance at movie theatres nationally rose by almost 60 percent between
132 Kerry Smith
1926 and 1934) and radio (heard by a million listeners in 1930) were a
part of popular culture and rural life as never before (Dai Nihon tøkei
nenkan 1930–36). Even a quick glance at the format of media directed
at the countryside suggests that it was meant to appeal to a broad audi-
ence of men and women, younger and more mature readers alike. Special
sections for children, forums, and topical articles intended for wives and
mothers were increasingly common features in these mass-market publi-
cations. Editors responded to what was a very real demand for material
directed toward, and useful to, rural citizens, and sustained high levels
of engagement with them throughout the 1930s. Consumers of the new
media responded enthusiastically as well; letters to the editor, essays
submitted by local authors, and a constant series of roundtable discus-
sions were only some of the public forums available to rural readers to
express their points of view.
The rural depression was thus very much a part of the emergent public
spectacle of the 1930s, one which included the military’s exploits on the
mainland, an ongoing fascination with the possibilities of urban deca-
dence, and political terrorism. The involvement of farmers and agrarianist
groups in acts of terrorism in the early 1930s marks another break with
past practices and patterns. Such political violence highlighted the sense
of desperation many rural Japanese felt, and heightened both the public’s
and the state’s awareness of the countryside’s volatility (Vlastos 1998).
Farmers’ associations whose activities normally revolved around sched-
uling contests to determine the best locally-produced fertilizer were in
1931 and 1932 moving in new directions, developing their own responses
to the depression and demanding that the state do more to help. These
demands were often couched in language that spoke of the government’s
abandonment of the countryside, and of the harm that would befall the
nation should such neglect persist. It mattered too that farmers were not
the only ones making such claims. Young officers and other critics of
the state’s policies connected rural impoverishment at home with threats
to Japan’s international standing, and especially to its new and vital
interest in Manchuria. The early 1930s’ juxtaposition of economic, diplo-
matic, and political crises was unprecedented. That the countryside was
deeply implicated in each of them speaks to the new circumstances
confronting farm families and rural communities.

Saving the family farm

Serious efforts to respond to the rural crises did not take shape until
almost three years after the depression began. The return to power of the
fiscally promiscuous Seiy¨kai in late 1931, the involvement of farmers
 Building the model village 133
1111 in the violence surrounding Prime Minister Inukai’s assassination on May
2111 15, 1932, and the Diet session scheduled for June set the stage for some
3 sort of action by the state. Further pressure was brought to bear by
4 a motley assortment of activists, rural radicals, and stodgy spokesmen
5111 for established rural elites. Using a combination of old-fashioned peti-
6 tion campaigns and media-savvy lobbying efforts, these groups depicted
7 the miserable state of the countryside in considerable color. A sympa-
8 thetic public expressed dismay at reports of impoverished families and
9 malnourished children – ignoring or simply ignorant of the fact that
1011 the depression had greatly exacerbated, but not created, such conditions
1 – as similar concerns were eventually voiced in the Diet as well. Though
2 June’s legislative session produced little in the way of concrete policies,
3111 it did end with a solemn promise that another, extraordinary, session
4 would be convened later that summer, one devoted to helping farm
5 and fishing communities. Lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats imme-
6 diately went to work defining the scope and focus of the promised
7 rural relief.
8 By the time the 63rd Diet convened in August, the premises behind
9 the state’s efforts to rescue the countryside were clear. Relief would come
20111 in three parts. The legislature tacitly acknowledged the severity of the
1 economic problems then facing farm, fishing, and other rural communi-
2 ties by offering first a substantial package of short-term direct aid, mostly
3 in the form of public works projects. The proposed budget for these
4 projects topped 800 million yen, far larger than any prior allocations to
5111 the countryside for a similar purpose. News of the Diet’s largesse was
6 balanced by the knowledge that the spending would neither continue for
7 very long, nor reach every needy family. The Home Ministry and the
8 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, through which most of the public
9 works funding would flow, stressed that such levels of spending were
30111 temporary – three years was the longest anyone would commit to.
1 Similarly, they argued that this form of ‘emergency relief’ was only
2 supposed to supplement diminished rural income by providing ready cash
3 in exchange for work on small-scale, labor-intensive, and local public
4 works projects. Ditch-digging, road repair, and the like were imagined,
5 not the construction of new infrastructure on the scale of the emerging
6 New Deal in the United States. There were no handouts, and no guar-
7 antees that work on the projects would provide farmers and their families
8 with enough money to get by. Still, it was hard to argue with the obser-
9 vation that 800 million yen was a significant improvement over the paltry
40111 sums available up to that point, and the works projects were a tried-and-
1 true response most localities could adapt to with ease (Miwa 1979;
2111 Yasutomi 1994).
134 Kerry Smith
Rural relief’s second tier focused on debt. Before the depression, anec-
dotal evidence and the few limited surveys that were conducted suggested
that many farmers had accumulated large debt burdens over the course
of the 1920s, as they borrowed to pay for farming inputs, household
expenses, and medical emergencies. The realities of credit often meant
that these funds were obtained at very high rates of interest from private
lenders, the sort of low-interest loans offered by banks and some govern-
ment institutions being unavailable to the typical farmer. Borrowing in
one form or another was very much a part of community life, and was
both quite common and necessary for the day-to-day functioning of the
family farm. The depression introduced a new set of circumstances,
however, in that what might have been a manageable debt burden while
commodity prices were at ‘normal’ levels quickly became something else
entirely after 1929. Because the cost of most inputs for farming (fertil-
izer, seeds, and so on) also declined, on paper it can be made to appear
as if income and spending achieved a rough equilibrium soon after the
depression began. The addition of debt to the equation suggests just how
uncommon such an outcome would have been for a typical farmer. Unable
to keep up payments on the loans they already had, and often without
access to any alternative sources of funding, farmers across Japan ran the
risk of losing their property and other collateral to their creditors. Some
farmers kept up a constant cycle of borrowing from one source to pay
back another, while others tried to curtail spending on all but the barest
essentials just to keep making payments on what they owed.
Such practices could not go on forever, however, and by 1932 increas-
ingly frantic calls for help from farmers’ associations and rural activists
pushed the government to take a closer look at the problem. A well-
organized and highly publicized petition campaign for a moratorium on
farm debt, run by an ad hoc collection of agrarianists (most of whom had
not been directly implicated in 1932’s violence), was clearly a major
impetus behind the state’s willingness to act. The petition campaigns had
a broad appeal, and sparked a flood of similarly intentioned delegations
of farmers and local leaders into Tokyo that summer. They brought with
them both detailed descriptions of local hardship and their proposals for
dealing with the crises in the countryside; some form of policy dealing
with debt was inevitably near the top of their lists.
One of the first developments to flow out of the campaigns for relief
was an effort to quantify the depression’s impact on all aspects of farm-
ing, but especially rural debt. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry surveys,
together with those generated by prefectural officials, revealed that farm-
ers were carrying a staggering debt burden. The fictional family depicted
in ‘Sandanbatake no kyødai,’ for example, had worked for five years to
 Building the model village 135
1111 cut their 5,000-yen debt in half. Such a heavy burden for a single house-
2111 hold would have been unusual but not unheard of. Rural debt nationally
3 in 1932 was estimated at roughly twice the value of all farm production
4 that year. Individual families in many instances were thought to owe
5111 between two and three times their annual incomes. While local variations
6 produced even greater gaps between what farmers earned and what they
7 owed, it was clear that the phenomenon was a national one (Teruoka 1984:
8 79–80). Loans cut two ways; at interest rates that could approach 20 per-
9 cent, borrowers could easily find themselves turning over most of their
1011 already depressed income to creditors, while lenders, many of them local
1 farmers and small businessmen, faced financial ruin if their loans proved
2 unrecoverable. The combination of rock-bottom prices, crushing debt, and
3111 a widespread sense of long-term vulnerability were new economic reali-
4 ties for the countryside. ‘Sandanbatake no kyødai’ and works like it
5 described circumstances that were all too familiar to rural readers.
6 The government’s response to these circumstances was informed both
7 by a recognition that rural debt was a real issue for many families, and
8 an understanding by bureaucrats and politicians that neither a debt mora-
9 torium nor any significant debt forgiveness was likely to win legislative
20111 approval. In their place the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry assem-
1 bled a collection of legal reforms and institutional incentives designed to
2 channel additional low-interest credit into the countryside. Many existing
3 village- and hamlet-level farmers’ organizations were given new oppor-
4 tunities to apply for low-interest loans, and thus bail out at least some of
5111 their members. In addition, the Diet authorized the creation of new local
6 ‘debt arrangement unions,’ which would be formed for the express
7 purpose of helping borrowers negotiate new terms of repayment with
8 their creditors (Kase 1979). Note that the process of debt arrangement
9 assumed at all times that existing loans would be repaid in time, and in
30111 full. The unions and the new funding that accompanied their creation at
1 best bought time and lower interest rates for farmers, not a complete
2 amnesty from debt.
3 Public works projects and debt adjustment were rural relief ’s two big-
4 budget items in 1932. Together they represented a sharp break with past
5 practice in terms of the scope of state spending on the countryside. The
6 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s budget almost doubled between
7 1931 and 1932, and by 1934 was enjoying an allocation almost three
8 times the size of its mid-1920s’ funding. Much of that growth reflected
9 new spending on public works and other efforts to channel money towards
40111 farming communities (Smith 2001: 139–45). It was the third and final
1 element of the state and local response to the depression, however, that
2111 became the primary vehicle for a broader reconsideration of rural reform
136 Kerry Smith
and recovery. The Farm, Mountain and Fishing Village Economic
Revitalization Campaign, or Nøsangyoson keizai køsei undø, took shape
alongside public works and debt arrangement policies in the summer of
1932. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, under whose control the
campaign fell, needed little input from the legislature to make the
campaign functional. Its budget requirements were minimal, for reasons
described below, and the Ministry had the additional advantage of being
able to adopt what was essentially a prefectural program of rural ‘self-
revitalization’ to its own needs. The Hyøgo Prefecture Agricultural
Association, assisted by the Imperial Agriculture Association, lobbied
hard to have its approach to recovery from the depression taken up and
given national application that summer.
That approach brought together what had been separate but not
uncommon elements of existing rural reform programs into a single
package. Building on practices that had been around since the Tokugawa
era, for example, Hyøgo farmers had been encouraged to conduct thor-
ough and uncompromising surveys of the state of their family and farm
finances, beginning with each and every household and ending with a
report that encompassed the entire community. With that data in hand,
the next step was to construct an equally detailed recovery plan, one that
outlined each family’s efforts to boost income, cut back on expenditure,
and diversify its production of crops, crafts, and fertilizer. Linked to these
planning exercises was the creation of new village or improved village-
level institutions – committees to oversee the development and imple-
mentation of local recovery plans, financially empowered cooperative
unions and the like, all focused on the shared task of revitalizing the
village economically, socially, and culturally.
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry bureaucrats embraced what
Hyøgo’s activists had designed. It is not hard to see why. The Ministry’s
officials were well aware that similar campaigns had been publicized
by the national agricultural association, and that many local branches of
the same association had been receptive to them. That the campaign
originated from outside the Ministry’s offices was thus an asset on several
levels; ministry bureaucrats would not have to design a campaign from
scratch, they were guaranteed the support of the Agricultural Association,
and, perhaps most importantly, an Economic Revitalization Campaign
could be put in place at very low cost to the Ministry. The state’s finan-
cial commitment to the campaign was limited at first to providing only
very small amounts of seed money to a few towns and villages, distrib-
uting the paperwork necessary for planning, and publicizing the
campaign’s goals. Since the campaign by design placed the burden of
surveying, planning and implementation on the communities themselves,
 Building the model village 137
1111 the central government had only to oversee their efforts, not take an active
2111 or direct role in each and every locale. Unlike the public works programs
3 and debt arrangement programs, which did represent a significant transfer
4 of resources to the countryside, the Economic Revitalization Campaign
5111 implied no such commitment.
6 The first descriptions of the campaign and invitations to participate in
7 it were sent out to village officials in September 1932. Designation of
8 applicant villages as Economic Revitalization Campaign communities
9 began soon afterwards, and continued until the campaign’s final months
1011 in 1941. As noted above, by that time almost four-fifths of the nation’s
1 rural communities had been designated as campaign participants. In an
2 era marked by short-lived reforms and a bewildering array of campaigns,
3111 Economic Revitalization stands out. Its particular focus on the country-
4 side marks it as different, as does its longevity. The next section explores
5 some of the changes the campaign brought to the countryside through
6 depression, recovery, and mobilization.
7
8
Recovery
9
20111 By design the Economic Revitalization Campaign was very much a local
1 event, one that directed towns and villages to look inward, and to shun
2 comparisons across even proximate borders. The interactions between the
3 campaign and rural communities can thus be hard to pin down. The
4 involvement of several thousand villages, distributed across the national
5111 landscape, further complicates careful analysis of the experiences common
6 to residents of those communities. Not even the Ministry of Agriculture
7 and Forestry, a consummate acquirer of statistics and reports, attempted
8 much in the way of a generalized, careful assessment of what the campaign
9 had accomplished, and why.
30111 At the same time, however, the uniformity of the campaign’s basic
1 structures and premises makes some general observations possible. This
2 section uses a single community, the village of Sekishiba, as a template
3 for an exploration of developments unfolding throughout rural Japan. This
4 is not to suggest that what happened in Sekishiba happened the same
5 way everywhere else, or that Sekishiba’s experiences reflect the full range
6 of possible developments within the campaign. My purpose here is limited
7 to identifying a few of the features evident in Sekishiba’s encounter with
8 the depression and with the Economic Revitalization Campaign, and to
9 drawing from these examples some informed conclusions about similar
40111 transformations under way on a larger scale.
1 Sekishiba became a village in 1889. It stopped being one in 1954,
2111 when the town next door absorbed it and six other nearby villages, creating
138 Kerry Smith
the city of Kitakata. These communities are located at the northern end
of the Aizu basin, in northeastern Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture. In the
1930s the closest urban center was Wakamatsu city, at the other end of
the basin and less than an hour away by rail. It was through Wakamatsu
that visitors and goods passed on their way to and from Tokyo and Japan’s
other urban and industrialized areas. While not isolated by any means,
Sekishiba and its neighboring communities were defined by the moun-
tain ranges that surrounded the Aizu basin, and by the importance of
farming to their survival. Before the postwar amalgamation did away with
its separate, independent character, Sekishiba was in many respects a
fairly typical farming community. During the depression it was home
to close to 400 families, most of whom raised rice, some silk cocoons,
and other farm products to support themselves. The distribution of land
holdings was not remarkable for a village of its size; landowners
slightly outnumbered the landless, and those with medium-sized holdings
were far more common than either the land-poor or the few residents
with very extensive local holdings. At the village’s northern end resi-
dents grew mulberry bushes and other upland crops in the dry fields there
– most of the farmland in the village, however, was given over to rice
paddies, criss-crossed with a complex network of irrigation ditches and
footpaths, linking each of Sekishiba’s fourteen hamlets to the rest of
the community.
It will come as no surprise that Sekishiba’s farmers were hit hard by
the depression. They suffered the collapse of rice and silk prices along
with the rest of the nation, and responded initially in much the same way
as everyone else, namely by growing more of their staple crops. The 1933
rice crop was the village’s largest to date, for example, and yields in
other crops were similarly higher on average during the 1930s than they
had been before the depression (Kitakata-shi shi hensan iinkai 1993:
796–9). Persistently depressed prices for these same crops, however,
meant that farm families could not reap any windfalls as a result of their
new-found productivity. Household income remained below pre-depres-
sion levels until 1935 or 1936, and was further burdened (and here too
Sekishiba’s farmers stayed true to national patterns) by substantial debt.
One mid-decade estimate placed the average household debt at more than
1,800 yen, far higher than it had been earlier in the 1930s, and a multiple
several times over of the average annual income from farming for those
families (‘Nøsakubutsu sakujø chøsa ni kansuru ken’ 1934; ‘Keizai køsei
keikaku kihon chøsa’ 1934).
Plans to involve the village in the Revitalization Campaign were
discussed in 1933, but unprecedented crop failures in 1934 temporarily
delayed any serious efforts at reform and recovery. The campaign’s first
 Building the model village 139
1111 concrete effects were not visible in the village until 1935. By that point
2111 the industrial sector and to some extent the national economy more broadly
3 had returned, more or less, to pre-depression levels. That the village
4 leaders stuck with their earlier plans, and in fact eventually expanded
5111 them in scale, helps illustrate the extent to which the countryside’s prob-
6 lems extended beyond issues of crop prices alone. As village leaders in
7 Sekishiba made clear in their written and public commentary, they under-
8 stood economic revitalization as a tool with which to address a whole
9 range of deeply rooted problems in rural life. In this they shared senti-
1011 ments expressed within the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and by
1 rural spokesmen in communities throughout Japan.
2 Sekishiba’s normality is one of the qualities that makes it a useful
3111 template for a discussion of rural life in the 1930s. That the village was
4 an early and well-documented participant in the Economic Revitalization
5 Campaign is another. The mayor and other local notables kept the village
6 engaged in the campaign throughout the 1930s, winning for it access to
7 much sought after funding from the government, and some measure
8 of notoriety in the area. Looking back on the considerable transforma-
9 tions in local farming practices, social life and institutional activity that
20111 marked the decade, the village’s leaders were quick to attribute
1 Sekishiba’s changes for the better to the campaign’s effects. While the
2 extent to which the campaign was responsible for broader changes then
3 under way in rural communities is certainly open to debate, there is little
4 question that the practices of revitalization bear close scrutiny for what
5111 they can reveal about the nature of that transformation.
6
7
Planning for recovery
8
9 Revitalization insinuated itself into the lives of average farmers in a
30111 variety of ways. From the start, residents of communities participating in
1 the campaign were committed to documenting, and thus quantifying, the
2 important and not-so-important details of their lives. Forms distributed
3 to every home in the village called on residents to report on income,
4 family size, the productivity of their farms, and how much they spent on
5 everything from salt to funerals. It was these documents, collected by the
6 local leaders of the campaign, which established the baseline against
7 which all future developments, familial and communal alike, were judged.
8 In Sekishiba as in most villages, the campaign was the first time that
9 such a detailed and comprehensive assessment of the state of the commu-
40111 nity had been attempted. Though most towns and villages compiled
1 aggregate statistics on annual production and other economic indicators,
2111 it was not at all common for them to query average citizens, and certainly
140 Kerry Smith
not in such detail. For most farmers, the campaign thus marked a new
level of official interest in their personal circumstances. That the ‘research’
phase of the campaign included all households and not just the well-off
landed farmers, up to that point the traditional targets of most rural reform
efforts, is significant as well. The campaign’s processes made it clear
that everyone’s participation was important, even as they implied that
revitalization’s benefits could accrue throughout the village.
The initial research and documentation phase of the campaign thus
established at least three things. First, the surveys and reports regular-
ized and defined the crises then confronting the community, suggesting
in the range and number of questions asked that it was possible to quan-
tify, to fully come to terms with, the depression’s impact. Second, insisting
that each household address essentially identical sets of questions and
categories made it clear that the rural crisis affected everyone in more or
less the same ways, and that the differences from one family to the next
were likely to be matters of degree and not substance. While not exactly
a leveling out of class and other differences, which were real and signifi-
cant factors in rural life, the survey process markedly downplayed their
importance. A similar stance is evident as well in the careful mapping
out of each family’s (and each community’s) long-term goals for
improving their economic, social and cultural circumstances, changes that
were to be made real through reforms in family finances, farming tech-
nologies, and social practices. Together these constitute a third component
of the campaign’s early effects on the lives of average farmers.
These were no simple plans. Each mirrored the format of the highly
detailed initial survey in insisting that households spell out exactly how
they would get a handle on their debt, cut costs and boost income, and
diversify their crops, to mention just some of the categories encompassed
in a typical household’s plan, every year for five years. Although the
planning documents did not spell out a preferred result for farm fami-
lies, or for their communities for that matter, the implications of the
planning process were clear enough. As local plans in Sekishiba attest,
farmers sought to grow more and more varied crops, to spend less on
fertilizer, entertainment, and in other categories where cost-savings could
be realized, and in general to pursue a more highly managed and rational
existence.
Those parts of Sekishiba’s revitalization plan that focused specifically
on farming include the following highlights. Local farmers proposed
producing almost 20 percent more rice and barley at the end of the first
five-year planning period. Over the same time span, the village’s plan-
ners relate, the local vegetable crop would more than double in yield,
handicraft production would generate almost four times as much cash,
 Building the model village 141
1111 and the community would move in a major way into animal husbandry.
2111 While the same farmers suggested that they would likely see reduc-
3 tions in some crops (in silk cocoons, for example), for the most part the
4 trend was toward a noticeable increase in the production of key staples
5111 (like rice), the introduction of several new products, and quite sharp
6 increases in what had until that point been almost secondary crops. In
7 short, Sekishiba’s farmers imagined a future in which their productive
8 capabilities were altered significantly from pre-depression norms (Smith
9 2001: 260–2).
1011 Farmers in other communities thought along similar lines, or at least
1 those in communities participating in the Revitalization Campaign did
2 so. In 1938 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry officials compiled the
3111 data from all the revitalization plans then available, and generated an esti-
4 mate of how the campaign might transform the nation’s rural economy.
5 As Table 6.1 suggests, the several thousand communities then active in
6 the campaign had mapped out an ambitious vision of a much more produc-
7 tive, diverse and robust farming economy. Not only were staple crops
8 like rice and wheat in line for a sharp increase in production, but so too
9 were a wide array of other, sometimes even obscure, farm goods.
20111 Persimmons were listed alongside peas and pumpkins as crops worthy
1 of special attention, and were thus among those that farmers proposed to
2 harvest in far greater volume than ever before. As in Sekishiba, planners
3 laid out a blueprint for change that sustained their ability to meet the
4 nation’s needs for rice and other staples, while at the same time moving
5111
6 Table 6.1 Summary of economic revitalization planning (selected crops),
7 1932–36
8
Crop Proposed changes in Number of
9 village plans
30111 hectares crop yield per including
1 under culti- production hectare this crop
vation (%) (%) (%)
2
3 Paddy rice 2 20 18 4,453
4 Wheat 34 72 28 4,137
5 Barley 14 38 21 2,779
Mulberry –26 18 59 2,434
6 Soy beans 20 42 19 1,945
7 Potatoes 62 90 17 1,859
8 Persimmon 79 112 6 1,692
9
Source: Nørinshø keizaikøseibu, 1985.
40111
Note
1 Figures reflect five-year goals in plans submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture between
2111 1932 and 1936.
142 Kerry Smith
aggressively into new markets with vegetables, fruits and a diverse array
of cash crops.
How farmers would manage such a revolution in productivity within
five years is a question planners confronted at all levels. Although the
Revitalization Campaign generally did not lay out specific solutions to
the problems then confronting the countryside, it did offer a series of
basic premises about how they might be addressed. As suggested above,
one consistent theme was an emphasis on a more rational application of
existing resources. Planners did look forward to opening up some new
land for farming, and this helps account for some of the increases in
harvest size expected over the first five years. (The ability to develop
new land must have varied considerably from region to region and village
to village; Sekishiba’s plans included almost no expansion in the total
area under cultivation.) Far more important to the campaign than new
farm land, however, were new farming techniques and technologies. Some
sense of this is evident in the fact that planners called for significant
increases not just in the total volume of the harvest from year to year,
but for sharp boosts in yields per hectare. Referring again to Table 6.1,
it is evident that farmers claimed in their planning documents that they
would be able to coax more of any given crop from their land than they
had in the past. Some of the improvements were more modest than others,
but it would be hard to argue that an 18 percent change in yield per
hectare for paddy rice production was insignificant. In Sekishiba, where
as noted above farmers were less likely to open up new fields for rice
cultivation, the community was supposed to realize its 20 percent growth
in the size of the rice harvest almost entirely through improvements in
yield per hectare. Planners there estimated that yields over the first five
years would improve on average from 2.7 to 3.3 koku of rice per tenth
of a hectare (Fukushima-ken keizaibu 1935: 123–6; Smith 2001: 260).
The specific techniques and technologies that would fuel such improve-
ments would of course vary from crop to crop and region to region, but
here Sekishiba’s circumstances can provide some clues as to how many
communities expected to proceed. In Sekishiba, planners explained that
the higher yields would stem from a series of innovations and new prac-
tices. Included on that list was the introduction of new strains of rice and
other crops, replacing existing less productive varieties. Double cropping
and the more aggressive use of existing fields (planting fruit trees along-
side rice paddies in land that would otherwise go unused, for example)
would make a difference, as would a more scientific application of better,
store-bought fertilizers. These steps would not be easy, and local leaders
had few illusions about the likelihood of individual farmers pursuing such
innovations on their own. The success of this component of revitalization
 Building the model village 143
1111 was closely tied to changes in the organization and leadership of the
2111 village.
3
4
Organizing for recovery
5111
6 The planning process in any campaign community included a large
7 component devoted to the reform of existing village institutions. One of
8 the reasons that farmers and Ministry of Agriculture bureaucrats alike
9 were often optimistic about the campaign’s potential was that it did link
1011 local improvement with better local leadership and technical instruction.
1 Two groups in particular were thought to be essential to any community’s
2 economic recovery; the local branch of the Imperial Agricultural Asso-
3111 ciation was one of them. This national body, long active in Tokyo on
4 behalf of landlords and farmers in general, usually in that order, had local
5 branches in most farming communities as well. Although the local asso-
6 ciations were prohibited from addressing the financial needs of farmers,
7 they were important channels for technical instruction and the sharing of
8 best practices. When villages could afford them, the associations often
9 hired full-time agricultural engineers to advise local farmers, and oversee
20111 test projects and the introduction of new technologies. Sekishiba’s revi-
1 talization plan, as was common in many communities, took as one of its
2 principles that the local agricultural association would be reinvigorated,
3 and encouraged to maintain just such a full-time engineer to keep farmers
4 abreast of the latest developments. This is in fact what happened in
5111 Sekishiba; the association’s engineer was a regular and apparently persua-
6 sive participant in village meetings and other forums designed to get local
7 farmers to make the right choices about crops, tools, and techniques.
8 A second and no less important local institution was the industrial
9 cooperative, or sangyø kumiai. A part of rural life since the government
30111 had fostered their development near the turn of the century, the cooper-
1 ative served farmers as creditor, marketing advisor, and discount broker,
2 to name but a few of its roles. The cooperative provided loans in its
3 capacity as a local credit union, for example, thus servicing the needs of
4 local farmers even as it leveraged its national buying power to get lower
5 prices for its members on essential supplies for the farm, fertilizer and
6 seed among them. As a marketer, the cooperative assisted local farmers
7 in transporting and selling their goods at prices better than other
8 middlemen could provide. Though ubiquitous in the countryside, the coop-
9 eratives were, by the 1930s, suffering from poor funding and a diminished
40111 membership base. The cost of dues kept many farmers out, and the
1 spiraling descent of commodity prices in the 1930s was the kiss of death
2111 for many struggling local cooperatives. Sekishiba’s was more or less
144 Kerry Smith
defunct by the mid-1930s; only a strenuous effort on the part of local
leaders got it back on its feet and active in the community once again.
They were helped in this by a series of initiatives spearheaded by
Revitalization Campaign advocates within the Ministry of Agriculture
and Forestry. Those initiatives greatly lowered the barriers to entry into
local cooperatives, thereby assuring that all farmers had access to the
resources associated with the cooperative. At the same time the state acted
to shore up its financial support for the cooperatives, thus helping preserve
their ability to provide credit and other services to local farmers.
Sekishiba’s experiences offer some sense of how the industrial coop-
eratives and Revitalization Campaign were intertwined. By the end of the
decade, Sekishiba’s cooperative had begun playing the role that planners
had expected of it. Not only did the cooperative handle more and more
of the community’s purchases of basic farm supplies (Sekishiba’s handled
four times as much fertilizer in 1937 than it had in 1933) and provide
the credit necessary to improve farming practices, but it also took on the
responsibility for selling an ever larger share of Sekishiba’s rice and other
crops to buyers outside the village – 60 percent of the village’s rice sales
in 1937 were handled by the cooperative (Smith 2001: 265, 277). Of
equal importance was the fact that the cooperative membership extended
by the end of the 1930s into almost every farm household in the village.
Whereas membership prior to the campaign had declined sharply from
already low pre-depression levels, revitalization brought with it efforts to
bring old members back in, and to enroll farmers who had previously
felt themselves too marginal or impoverished to participate. The cam-
paign emphasized the benefits of full participation, and local leaders
went to considerable efforts to see to it that just about everyone had
access to the cooperative’s resources. One can see in this further signs
as well of the campaign’s inclusionist tendencies. That is, by bringing
together landed, middling and tenant farmers within the same hamlet and
village-level structures, the campaign implicated everyone equally as
victims of the depression, and as participants in recovery. The technical
instruction and even more so the tangible resources associated with easier
credit and cheaper fertilizer were, under the campaign’s aegis, accessible
to all comers and no longer the privileged domain of the village elites.
This sort of coordination manifested itself in other ways as well. An
Economic Revitalization committee, created at the outset of the village’s
participation in the campaign, brought together leaders from many of
the institutions central to village life. Its members included the mayor
and most of his staff, teachers from the local elementary school and its
principal, members of the village council, and the heads of each of the
village’s numerous business and farming unions and organizations. The
 Building the model village 145
1111 committee’s role was multifold; it provided much-needed coordination
2111 within Sekishiba’s complicated network of overlapping institutions and
3 groups, and facilitated the spread of information about the campaign to
4 the members of those bodies. That no such structure had been put in
5111 place before the campaign is itself telling, and if nothing else the
6 committee served as a visible reminder of how revitalization was trans-
7 forming the institutional life of the community.
8 That same process was evident in other settings as well. Soon after
9 the campaign started in Sekishiba, organizers began holding monthly
1011 meetings within each hamlet. These buraku jøkai brought together repre-
1 sentatives of all the hamlet’s households for lectures and discussion. The
2 specific topics varied from session to session, but all related in some
3111 fashion to revitalization. The economic and social crises facing the village
4 were recurring themes. Sekishiba’s local agricultural technician was likely
5 to speak on proper farming technique, while the mayor, a regular speaker
6 at many sessions, could be counted on for a blend of moral exhortation
7 and village boosterism. The assemblies were designed to foster cooper-
8 ation in spirit and practice within each hamlet, but they also made it that
9 much easier for village leaders – and the state – to reach into each of
20111 the village’s homes on a regular basis with the latest slogans, reports,
1 and suggestions for personal and communal improvement. In Sekishiba
2 at least, local leaders never faltered in their support for the meetings,
3 which were consistently well-attended over the course of the campaign.
4 Organizational reforms had at least one other effect on village life in
5111 the 1930s. Structures like the Economic Revitalization committee and the
6 other re-invigorated civic groups created new opportunities for leader-
7 ship at the local level. These opportunities had both quantitative and
8 qualitative components, in that bodies such as the revitalization commit-
9 tees sharply expanded the number of people who could be officially
30111 involved in overseeing the local reform and recovery process. At the same
1 time, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry used its influence over
2 campaign communities to broaden definitions of who was qualified to fill
3 those leadership positions. While in some ways reminiscent of the earlier
4 Ministry attempts to reshape local leadership described previously in this
5 volume by Tsutsui, the Revitalization Campaign reflected a significantly
6 different perspective on who might guide local farmers, and why. Revitali-
7 zation Campaign guidelines encouraged local committees to include
8 younger and more technically skilled individuals within their ranks.
9 Though seldom made explicit, the implication of such instructions was
40111 that the traditional sources of leadership were not up to the task at hand,
1 ‘traditional’ in these instances referring to landlords and other local elites,
2111 long the power brokers in many rural communities.
146 Kerry Smith
In order to foster the development of a new generation of technically
savvy and reform-minded leaders, the Ministry worked through the
campaign to identify and help train groups of ‘local mainstays.’ Local
committees were encouraged to send promising young men to Ministry-
endorsed seminars and schools for instruction in advanced farming
techniques, revitalization planning, and modern farm management.
Although the total number of those able to attend these sessions was
never large, the Ministry was clearly in search of cost-effective ways to
influence local leaders. The cumulative effect of identifying even a few
mainstays was thought to be significant. Those able to attend one of the
regional training centers, or even a much shorter seminar, were expected
to share what they had learned with the rest of the village. Since those
chosen for additional training were presumably already in some way part
of the local revitalization or leadership apparatus, it is easy to see how
their new-found expertise would make itself felt in the day-to-day func-
tioning of the village (Smith 2001: 302). In Sekishiba, which sent a
number of young men out of the village for training, hamlet meetings
were a useful venue for these expositions. And though it has been hard
to pin down the particular impact of programs targeting local mainstays,
it is clear that village leadership nationally in the late 1930s and early
1940s was undergoing some significant changes. Village council mem-
bers, union leaders, and occupants of other positions of (admittedly
limited) power were younger and better educated than their predecessors
had been; it was not unheard-of for some of them to be tenant farmers,
itself a remarkable transformation from circumstances of only a decade
or so earlier. It is reasonable to conclude that some of the impetus for
these changes came from the campaign, and, if nothing else, reflects the
new realities of the post-depression countryside.

Mobilization, war, and recovery

Astute observers of the countryside will note that such efforts at institu-
tional reform and communal harmony were nothing new. Policy makers
from the Tokugawa era on through the Local Improvement campaign had
pursued similar goals, and sometimes with similar methods. One quality
which sets the pursuit of revitalization in the 1930s apart, however, is
that the campaign’s tenure overlapped with a significant and real trans-
formation in farming practices and outcomes. This transformation is
visible across several fronts at once. Crop diversification is one of them,
increased productivity another. In the depression’s aftermath the nation’s
farmers moved quickly to introduce new varieties of produce, or expand
production of existing cash crops (Teruoka 1981: 172–4). Some sense of
 Building the model village 147
1111 what this meant at the local level is evident in Sekishiba’s experience,
2111 where the results of revitalization planning were impressive. The number
3 of plum trees, for example, grew from 400 to 1,400 over the first five
4 years of the Revitalization Campaign; the persimmon crop doubled, even
5111 as the village tallied the addition of some 3,000 rabbits and chickens to
6 earlier livestock counts. These developments took place at the same time
7 that local farmers were able to realize equally impressive improvements
8 in the yields of local staples. Rice yields per hectare, after growing only
9 4 percent between 1926 and 1932, rose 8 percent between 1935 and 1936
1011 alone, and by 1940 were 15 percent higher than in the middle of the
1 decade (‘Keizai køsei keikaku jikkø høkoku’ 1936–41).
2 Such gains are significant, but it is worth pointing out that local farmers
3111 seldom did as well as they had said they would in their revitalization
4 plans. In 1934 village residents assigned production goals to close to
5 50 different crops, livestock, and farm products. As of 1939, farmers had
6 met those goals for only a dozen items. That the campaign was deemed
7 a success and not a failure despite such shortcomings reflects something
8 else about the recovery process. What was perhaps most important was
9 that these changes in productive strategies had a measurable impact on
20111 the financial well-being of local farmers. By the end of the 1930s (and
1 the end of five years of revitalization planning) an average Sekishiba
2 household was producing goods that were worth almost three times as
3 much as the value of production in 1931. Even adjusted for inflation those
4 are significant gains. As a result of these changes savings rates were up,
5111 and the once crushing levels of debt were reportedly under control by
6 the end of the first campaign planning cycle. Given where the village
7 was in 1932 and the bleak assessments of the countryside’s future that
8 were commonplace then, these were welcome developments.
9 Sekishiba’s success did not go unnoticed. In 1937 the village was
30111 chosen as one of only a handful of villages in the Aizu region able to
1 participate in a new component of the Economic Revitalization Campaign,
2 one that made available substantial new funding to help the community
3 implement its revitalization plans. A year later another honor was
4 bestowed on Sekishiba, as the national government identified it as one
5 of only two Fukushima communities to receive an award marking the
6 fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s system of local government. The
7 village’s achievements in the Revitalization Campaign were featured
8 prominently in the documents explaining Sekishiba’s qualifications to
9 receive the award. Local leaders also pointed to the hamlet assemblies
40111 as indicators of their commitment to reform, and as a sign of how far
1 reform had progressed. From the time the first meetings were held in the
2111 early autumn of 1934, attendance was consistently high and the sessions
148 Kerry Smith
themselves productive. For many participants, such changes were proof
of the campaign’s efficacy, and of its promise for a better future.
Assessing the economic recovery of villages like Sekishiba is compli-
cated, to say the least, by the fact that it coincides with the nation’s
mobilization for war. That the countryside benefited from the massive
military build-up of the 1930s goes without saying; rural Japanese were
among those taking on new jobs in the industrial sector, even as a pros-
perity-driven boom in consumer spending helped farmers sell their goods
at a premium for the first time in many years. Though village leaders and
rural activists were loath to give much credit to the broader workings of
the market when asked to account for the apparent recovery of the coun-
tryside, and focused instead on the importance of local reforms and
initiatives, it was clear that farms and villages were being pulled along
as the economy geared up for war.
Revitalization and mobilization overlapped in other ways as well. As
the war in China dragged on, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
began to modify the Revitalization Campaign in support of the war effort.
What that meant in practical terms was a noticeable shift away from revi-
talization as a set of methods for recovery and reform and toward the
use of the same methods in the direct service of mobilization. The early
emphasis on crop diversification and recovery plans unique to each house-
hold, for example, gave way to more focused efforts to boost production
of certain key crops for the entire community. Fertilizer rationing and
the distribution of other key inputs for farming were among the many
new responsibilities of the local revitalization committees. (‘Keizai køsei
iinkai jøseikin køfu shinseisho’ 1939).
Hamlet assemblies provided ready and consistent access to each house-
hold – the reinvigorated industrial cooperatives and agricultural associa-
tions played similar roles. In short, the very methods, new institutions
and rhetoric that had begun to reshape the community in the aftermath
of the depression were readily adopted to the needs of mobilization, and
probably made it easier for the state to harness local resources and the
commitment of rural citizens than would have been possible otherwise.
The language of revitalization was one of communal solidarity, coopera-
tion, and the application of scientific methods to vexing but surmount-
able problems. Once co-opted by the government for the purposes of
mobilization, all these qualities and more made it possible to redefine the
goals of revitalization on a national scale, and thus to connect continued
economic stability with the very structures of the wartime state.
 Building the model village 149
1111 Conclusion: Missing pieces
2111
Sh¨ichi: I don’t take pleasure in eating good food, or wearing nice
3
clothes, or just walking around having fun. Happiness is
4
5111 in my heart. Raising up this hoe and bringing it down
6 with all my might, at that moment my pleasure knows no
7 bounds!
8 Ayako: (Laughing derisively) What a joke! That’s something that’s
9 written in every single one of those books for farmers.
1011 They’re just flowery words designed to put a damper on
1 young people’s spirits. It’s just morphine.
2 Sh¨ichi: (Strongly) You’re wrong! You . . . , no, not just you, but
3111 city people in general, you all think of farmers as
4 completely ignorant, as something out of the past, but that
5 only shows how little you understand. We farmers are
6 constantly studying and researching. And not just about
7 our work, either. We’re aware of what is going on ideo-
8 logically, and in the world at large. We’re not going to be
9 tricked/provoked by you. We’re here because we want to
20111 be, not because we don’t have any skills.
1 Ayako: Which is precisely why I say you should come to Tokyo!
2 You being here is a waste of talent.
3 Sh¨ichi: That may be. But if I leave, Japan will collapse.
4 Ayako: Well, listen to you talk.
5111 (Nukada and Takagi 1936: 76)
6
7 Sekishiba’s postwar history is unremarkable. In 1954, the village and its
8 neighboring communities were absorbed by the town next door – together
9 they became the city of Kitakata. The newly formed city remains a hybrid
30111 of light industry and farming. Local farmers continue to supply rice and
1 other crops both to local consumers and to buyers in distant markets. A
2 similar pattern of amalgamation and of a blurring between town and
3 country took place throughout the nation.
4 If Sekishiba/Kitakata’s postwar experiences stand out in any way, it
5 is in the particular strategies the community pursued to maintain economic
6 and cultural vibrancy at the end of the century. The city has transformed
7 itself, quite deliberately, into a tourist and travel destination for Japan’s
8 urban leisure class. Its marketing strategies rest on the twin foundations
9 of Kitakata ramen, a local version of the common noodle-soup dish, and
40111 on kura, tile and mortar storehouses rare elsewhere in Japan but ubiqui-
1 tous in Kitakata (Kitakata-shi shi hensan iinkai 1998: 830–1, 838). These
2111 attractions had long been part of local lore; beginning in the 1970s both
150 Kerry Smith
were introduced to a national audience. Television programs devoted to
travel and campaigns encouraging Japanese to experience ‘exotic Japan’
played key roles in commodifying the city’s past, a process that was
strongly encouraged by local leaders. The result has been a steady stream
of television crews and tourist buses into the city, and an equally robust
export of Kitakata ramen to grocery store shelves nationwide.
While the particulars of Kitakata’s strategy to overcome economic
obsolescence are unique, the developments that necessitated a turn to
tourism are not. As John Knight suggests later in this volume, a number
of rural communities have developed their own strategies of reinvention
and reinvigoration to address similar problems. Which is another way of
suggesting, it seems to me, that, as successful as the Economic Revital-
ization Campaign appears to have been at shaping the course of recovery
and defining rural Japan’s response to the crises of the early 1930s, it
could not begin to resolve all of the countryside’s problems.
This was certainly the case where tenancy was concerned. Tenancy
and its implications for productivity and social stability were simply not
issues that the campaign ever addressed in any significant way. Quite
the contrary – eligibility for designation as a campaign village, and even
more so for access to key campaign funding, was contingent on the absence
of landlord–tenant struggles within the community. The state thus helped
insure not only that participating villages would not be sidetracked by
local conflicts, but also that recovery itself would rest on residents’ will-
ingness to keep discord from bubbling over. At no time did the Ministry,
or the campaign, suggest that responding to the crises of the depression
era would have to include addressing questions of land ownership, access
to land, rents, and so on. As other chapters in this volume make clear,
the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry eventually turned to other policies
to help address tenancy’s costs. These policies were never intended to cut
wide swaths in the countryside, nor did they address more than a handful
of those potentially in search of some resolution to their problems
with land, rent, and security. As broadly as the Revitalization Campaign
sought to define its mandate to reform rural life, its silence on some-
thing as central as tenancy meant that it would require an occupation
and a land reform to finally create a workable set of solutions to those
particular problems.
The campaign also provided a forum for, but could not resolve, other
concerns about rural life. The dialogue from the closing act of ‘Sandan-
batake no kyødai’ (‘The Brothers of the Three-tan Field’) excerpted at
the beginning of this section hints at a discourse that emerged out of the
crises and local responses to them. If revitalization laid out a range of
possible responses to the depression, it also seems to have made more
 Building the model village 151
1111 visible a public dialogue about the purposes of recovery. That is, was the
2111 value of recovery simply that it allowed rural citizens to escape destitu-
3 tion and poverty? Or could it be something more ambitious, perhaps even
4 that a revitalized community meant that farmers could live more like their
5111 urban counterparts, and enjoy the same forms of amusement and personal
6 improvement?
7 In Sekishiba, these questions were raised in multiple forums throughout
8 the 1930s. Local leaders made strong and consistent connections between
9 economic revitalization and the ‘reform of daily life,’ or seikatsu kaizen.
1011 Hamlet assemblies returned again and again to questions of the village’s
1 future, and how residents hoped to live in the years ahead (Kitakata-shi
2 shi hensan iinkai 1991: 653–4). By this local leaders seem to have referred
3111 to both a transformation of physical culture (through better cooking tech-
4 niques and architectural changes, for example) and to less tangible matters
5 of citizenship and personal empowerment. At one point the Economic
6 Revitalization committee even produced a ‘Sekishiba Village Agreement
7 on Economic Retrenchment and Moral Reform,’ a lengthy list of sug-
8 gestions for changes in daily habits, social practices, and attitudes. The
9 agreement urged residents to be more punctual, to refrain from excess
20111 spending, and to think carefully about questions of health and diet (‘Keizai
1 køsei keikaku jisshi ni kansuru ken’ 1935; Smith 2001: 319). Education
2 loomed large as well – local planners outlined the steps that families
3 themselves could take to make sure that their children were learning not
4 only useful subjects but also productive ways of imagining their place in
5111 the nation. The ‘reform of daily life’ thus linked improvements in the
6 economic well-being of the community with a positive and productive
7 attitude toward rural life and rural culture. Prosperity and recovery were
8 thus tied not simply to an alleviation of abject poverty, but to the construc-
9 tion of a vibrant ‘good life,’ rich on its own terms, and definitely not a
30111 mirror image of urban modernity.
1 The same topics were being taken up outside of Sekishiba as well.
2 The exchange between Sh¨ichi and Ayako, the landlord’s daughter,
3 dramatizes some of the tension between efforts to define the countryside
4 either as a backwater or as a separate and powerful counterweight to city
5 life. Ie no hikari offered frequent and perhaps more realistic examples of
6 local attempts to address these same concerns throughout the 1930s. In
7 a forum discussion on ‘The rebuilding of rural life’ published in October
8 1934, leaders from business, the military, education and representatives
9 of local governments held forth on the proper course of reform in nutri-
40111 tion (‘Don’t stick with the practices of the past – find nutritious ways to
1 cook!’ or ‘Don’t get seduced by urban cooking – develop rural tastes!’),
2111 toilet design, and clothing styles (‘Nøson seikatsu no tatenaoshi’ 1934:
152 Kerry Smith
113) In short, these critics sought to construct patterns of daily life that
were at once enjoyable and modern, while not replicating whatever passed
for normal in the cities. Accounts from two local activists in Tottori
Prefecture were even more down-to-earth in their battle against the lure
of the city. They had waged a two-year struggle to convince the village’s
young men to cut their hair very short (a style soon known locally as
‘the køsei cut’) as a sign of their commitment to revitalization and the
community. It was also a tangible sign of their having given up clan-
destine visits to the nearby town and its cafés. The young women in those
cafés, it was reported, were partial only to men with long hair (‘Køsei
keikaku wa dore dake jitsugen shita ka’ 1935: 69).
As suggested earlier, wartime mobilization complicated but also inten-
sified these dialogues. Before the realities of diminishing resources and
manpower put an end to speculation about a brighter future for rural citi-
zens in the near term, magazines like Ie no hikari and other forums for
public discussion sustained debates about modernity, rational social prac-
tices, and the purposes of prosperity for many years (Itagaki 1992: 278–9).
In Taiwan, colonial administrators started a buraku shinkø (hamlet devel-
opment) campaign in the mid-1930s, which closely paralleled the goals
and methods of revitalization in the metropole (Fix 1993). The campaign,
which eventually involved several thousand Taiwanese rural communi-
ties and is credited with helping to bring about significant improvements
in agricultural productivity, was never entirely distinct from ongoing
efforts to replace Taiwanese culture with Japanese practices. One of the
ironies here is that bureaucrats and local activists within Japan were at
the same time doing their best to convince farmers that the future required
abandoning Japan’s traditions and long-standing practices in favor of the
new and rational.
It will come as no surprise then that rural communities and the state
revisited many of these same issues in the aftermath of the war- and
occupation-era reforms. The Ministry of Agriculture’s New Village
Campaign of the mid-1950s is arguably little more than a re-labeling of
Revitalization Campaign practices and purposes, less successfully imple-
mented. The new campaign’s program of planning, crop diversification,
and the like was designed to help farmers maintain the gains they had
made relative to factory workers and city dwellers over the course of the
war and in the aftermath of the postwar land reform. The boom years of
the Korean War had again favored the modern industrial sector over agri-
culture, and soon found farmers lagging behind the rest of the nation’s
improving standards of living and income levels. Revitalization in its new
guise was unable to correct those disparities, something participants in
the New Village Campaign were quick to discover.
 Building the model village 153
1111 The 1961 passage of the Basic Agricultural Law reflected the state’s
2111 abandonment of self-help as the first line of defense for rural communi-
3 ties. In its place the state committed itself to a sweeping set of new
4 benefits for farmers, including guarantees of a rough parity in income
5111 between farmers and factory workers. No such redistribution of the
6 nation’s wealth had been thought possible or even desirable before. The
7 state’s willingness to take such a step reflects both the importance of agri-
8 culture and rural communities to the nation’s sense of itself, and a
9 recognition that nothing short of parity would provide the sort of stability
1011 the state needed to sustain rapid economic growth.
1 Interestingly, even as Japan was moving away from a reliance on revi-
2 talization-like programs for the countryside, South Korea was embracing
3111 them. Park Chung Hee’s government, after almost a decade of planning,
4 in 1970 set in motion the Saemaul Undong (New Community Movement).
5 In language reminiscent of earlier efforts in Japan, the movement’s
6 rhetoric ‘centered on the idea that individual effort and sacrifice could
7 solve the economic problems of the rural sector,’ even as its practical
8 components focused on the development of local infrastructure, cosmetic
9 improvements to housing, and the introduction of scientific farming tech-
20111 niques (Brandt and Lee 1981; Abelmann 1996: 209). Largely abandoned
1 by the mid-1980s, the Saemaul movement nevertheless defined more than
2 a decade of rural reform efforts in South Korea at a particularly
3 contentious period in that nation’s history. While far from identical in
4 conception or implementation, the similarities with what had been
5111 attempted in rural Japan in the 1930s are unmistakable and intriguing.
6 If nothing else, these convergences suggest that local and national elites
7 in both countries shared similar understandings of what qualities a modern
8 countryside ought to possess. It would, in their vision, leave existing class
9 structures more or less untouched, maintain political and social order,
30111 and preserve those qualities of harmony, cooperation, and diligence long
1 associated with rural life.
2 These model villages were always much easier to imagine than to
3 build. In the decades after the land reform and the 1961 Basic Agricultural
4 Law, farmers did indeed share in the nation’s prosperity, thus appearing
5 to resolve at least some of dilemmas that revitalization’s advocates had
6 struggled to confront. As later chapters in this volume will suggest,
7 however, and Sekishiba/Kitakata’s forays into the exotic rural attest, the
8 countryside continues to contest its place in modern Japan, and its future
9 course.
40111
1
2111
154 Kerry Smith

References
Abelmann, N. 1996. Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent, A South Korean Social
Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Adachi Ikitsune. 1973. ‘Jiriki køsei undøka no “Ie no hikari”,’ (Kikan) Gendai shi
2 (May): 105–14.
Brandt, V.S.R. and M.-g. Lee. 1981. ‘Community Development in the Republic
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Dai Nihon tøkei nenkan. 1930–36.
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shi-shi hensan shitsu: Sekishiba mura yakuba. Keizai køsei kankei shiryø,
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araretaru nøsanbutsu no seisan keikakuhyø.’ In Nøsangyoson keizai køsei undøshi
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‘Nøson seikatsu no tatenaoshi.’ 1934. Ie no hikari: 112–22.
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1111 Nukada Roppuku and Takagi Kiyogaku. 1936. ‘Sandanbatake no kyødai, Keizai
2111 køsei geki.’ Ie no hikari: 66–80.
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4 Kaichirø. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
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Tasaki Nobuyoshi. 1989. ‘Toshi bunka to kokumin ishiki.’ In Køza Nihon rekishi
8 10, ed. Rekishigaku kenky¨kai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
9 Teruoka Sh¨zø. 1981. Nihon nøgyø-shi. Tokyo: Y¨hikaku.
1011 –––– 1984. Nihon nøgyø mondai no tenkai. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shuppankai.
1 Vlastos, S. 1998. ‘Agrarianism Without Tradition: The Radical Critique of Prewar
2 Japanese Modernity.’ In Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern
3111 Japan, ed. Stephen Vlastos. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4 Yasutomi Kunio. 1994. Shøwa kyøkøki ky¨nø seisaku shiron. Tokyo: Hassakusha.
5
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5
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8
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1
2111
7 Securing prosperity and serving
the nation
Japanese farmers and Manchuria,
1931–33
Sandra Wilson*

In October 1932, 423 army reservists and their families left Japan to set-
tle in Manchuria. Supposedly, they were to be the first of a great wave of
farmers who would emigrate to northeast China, newly brought under
Japanese control following the Manchurian Incident of September 1931,
in order to secure Japan’s rights in the area, solve the problem of over-
population in the homeland, grow food to send back to their under-
nourished compatriots suffering during the acute economic depression, and
ensure regional peace as well. In fact, Japanese emigration to Manchuria
never achieved any of these lofty aims. The farmers who did go encoun-
tered numerous obstacles, from attacks by ‘bandits’ to labor shortages to
outbreaks of dysentery, and many settlements failed. At every point
recruits proved elusive, and emigration targets were not met. In the first
five years, fewer than 3,000 households moved from Japan to Manchuria.
Though the project received significant government support in 1936, it
was swiftly undermined by the outbreak of full-scale war with China the
following year, with its attendant labor shortages in rural Japan.
This chapter considers the movement to send rural settlers to Manchuria
in the first years after the Manchurian Incident, with particular reference
to the kind of arguments used in attempts to persuade farmers to emi-
grate. In this period the concrete achievements of those who sought to
promote emigration were negligible; yet in rural Japan the idea of emigra-
tion to Manchuria had considerable rhetorical power. An investigation
of the appeal to farmers to leave their homeland for Manchuria shows
two critical features. First, emigration was clearly presented as a
personal solution to the economic difficulties of Japanese farmers during
the crisis of the early 1930s, even though the real motive of advocates

* This chapter builds on arguments first presented in my article ‘The “New Paradise”:
Japanese Emigration to Manchuria in the 1930s and 1940s’, International History
Review, 17(2), 249–86.
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 157
1111 of emigration was undoubtedly military and strategic. Thus the Japanese
2111 army boldly exploited the very real difficulties of the countryside in the
3 pursuit of its own aims. Second, the call for emigrants was openly linked
4 with an abstract nationalist rhetoric that encouraged settlers to see them-
5111 selves as vital contributors to the preservation of the homeland and the
6 expansion of Japanese influence abroad. In this sense, the appeal for
7 settlers for Manchuria drew upon decades of effort by both official
8 and civilian ideologues to persuade ordinary Japanese people to think in
9 terms of the nation, and to identify their own interests as coterminous
1011 with the national benefit – while also revealing a certain confidence that
1 such appeals would by now prove effective. More immediately, calls for
2 emigrants reinforced particular rhetorical constructions of the nation that
3111 had been elaborated in detail during the crisis provoked by Japan’s inva-
4 sion of Manchuria in 1931–32, constructions of Japan as small and
5 crowded but nevertheless vigorous and economically and culturally
6 advanced (Wilson 2002: 225–6). The campaign to send emigrants to
7 Manchuria now suggested a concrete way for ordinary Japanese to partic-
8 ipate in furthering the national mission, and in so doing, to demonstrate
9 the superior cultural attributes of the Japanese people.
20111 In the early 1930s, then, Manchuria offered the vision of an alterna-
1 tive future for Japanese farmers – a future in which life would be both
2 prosperous in personal terms and significant in national terms, in stark
3 contrast to reality in the villages at the time. Though comparatively few
4 took concrete steps to embrace the proffered new life, ideas about Man-
5111 churia and Japanese opportunities there lingered long in public rhetoric
6 and in popular culture, no matter how divorced from reality they turned
7 out to be.
8
9
The Great Depression
30111
1 In rural Japan, the early 1930s were marked above all by the experience
2 of the Great Depression. The income and welfare of farmers had already
3 fallen in the 1920s, due to an absolute decline in prices for agricultural
4 goods caused by competition from rice imports from Korea and Taiwan;
5 the government’s effort throughout the decade to deflate the economy
6 sufficiently to allow a return to the gold standard, abandoned in 1917, at
7 prewar parity; and a fall in world prices for agricultural goods (Patrick
8 1971: 218–19; see also Smith’s chapter in this volume). Against such a
9 backdrop, the worldwide decline in export prices for agricultural goods
40111 from 1929 onward plunged rural Japan into crisis.
1 The drop in silk prices in particular was catastrophic, given that 40
2111 percent of all farm households raised silk, with much higher dependence
158 Sandra Wilson
on silk in certain areas. In 1930, spring cocoon prices dropped to about
half those of the previous year, and during 1931 the price for silk thread
also fell by more than half compared to January 1930 (Nakamura 1988:
274–5, 306–7). In Nagano Prefecture, a major cocoon-producing region,
80 percent of farm households raised silkworms in 1930. However, a
middle-level farm household producing 100 kan, or 375 kg, of cocoons
per year would have earned only 200 yen in 1930, compared to 1,000
yen in 1925 (Kobayashi 1977: 20). Then, in October 1930, prices also
plummeted for rice, the other staple of Japanese agricultural production.
In 1925 rice had sold for 41 yen per bushel (koku). In August 1930 the
price had fallen to 30 yen and 50 sen per bushel, in September to 28 yen
and 70 sen, and in October to 19 yen (Nakamura 1988: 307; Mori 1999:
16). A bumper rice crop was partly responsible for the sudden, cata-
strophic drop during 1930.
In 1931, the average price for rice was 18 yen and 46 sen per bushel,
but the cost of production was 20 to 23 yen per bushel (Hashimoto 1984:
193–4). The result, unavoidably, was an increase in farm household
debt, which rose in 1932 to an average of 846 yen per household. At the
time, the average annual income for tenant farmers, including earnings
from both agricultural and non-agricultural sources, was 552 yen; so
average debt was more than 1.5 times higher than the average annual
income for tenant farmers (Nakamura 1989: 42–3). In 1930, 59 percent
of owner-farmers and 76 percent of tenants were in debt. Opportunities
to increase the household income through wage labor decreased as the
textile mills which had employed so many young rural women closed or
suspended operations in the depression, and as wages for agricultural
labor fell. According to figures produced by the Imperial Agricultural
Association (Teikoku nøkai), the cost of agricultural production fell by
24.1 percent between 1930 and 1931, with 35.2 percent of this decrease
attributable to wage reduction (Hashimoto 1984: 194). In the Tøhoku
region, where economic suffering was acute, the selling of daughters into
prostitution became a media issue from October 1931 onwards. Across
the country, the plight of landless second and third sons of farming fami-
lies, who were to become particular targets of the emigration campaign,
was also severe.
The government’s major strategy for tackling the depression is repre-
sented by the economic revitalization movement (keizai køsei undø),
which is discussed elsewhere in this volume by Kerry Smith (see also
Smith 2001). In this context farmers were exhorted to be frugal, to rely
on themselves and each other and, eventually, to restructure their villages
economically. In the early 1930s, however, an alternative strategy was
also espoused by some: struggling farmers, it was said, could save them-
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 159
1111 selves by emigrating to Manchuria, now that the Kwantung Army had
2111 brought it under Japanese control. There they would have quantities of
3 land they could not dream of in Japan, plus the opportunity to grow food
4 to send back to the homeland and a chance to participate in the historic
5111 mission of the Japanese race to spread beyond Japan’s borders.
6
7
Promoting emigration to Manchuria
8
9 The campaign to send farmers to Manchuria after September 1931 was
1011 in no way spontaneous; nor was it an extension of any significant previous
1 experience of emigration to that region. Neither was it, from the point of
2 view of its proponents, a genuine response to the domestic economic
3111 crisis, even though the appeal to potential emigrants was couched in those
4 terms. Rather, it was the product of planning by the Kwantung Army in
5 the service of its own military and political goals: to secure and extend
6 Japanese gains in Manchuria and to defend the border between Manchuria
7 and the Soviet Union. Thus the emigration movement was the orches-
8 trated result of a particular military-political nexus produced by the events
9 of 1931–32 in northeast China. In other words, the campaign to send
20111 emigrants to Manchuria developed not from any existing social basis but
1 because of persistent efforts by key people within and outside the
2 Kwantung Army, and because of the growing influence of military prior-
3 ities in political affairs.
4 In itself, the idea of Japanese emigration was not new, though numbers
5111 of emigrants had always been tiny compared to those from other coun-
6 tries. Internally, emigration to Hokkaido in particular had begun during
7 the Meiji period, and continued spasmodically in the 1920s and 1930s.
8 From the early twentieth century, the main overseas destination for
9 Japanese settlers was Brazil, which continued to provide serious compe-
30111 tition for Manchuria as a target area after 1931. Emigration to Manchuria
1 had also had its advocates from at least 1905. Prominent proponents of
2 the military and strategic need for Japanese settlements there included
3 Gotø Shinpei, first president of the South Manchurian Railway Company,
4 Komura Jutarø, foreign minister from 1901 to 1905 and again from 1908
5 to 1911, and elder statesman Yamagata Aritomo. Very small numbers of
6 emigrants had in fact attempted to settle in Manchuria in the 1910s and
7 1920s. Basically, however, their attempts had failed, for a variety of
8 reasons including difficulties in securing land for the settlers (see Wilson
9 1995: 252–3). It was not until Japan’s invasion of Manchuria had produced
40111 an entirely new framework that emigration began to be taken seriously.
1 What changed in 1931–32 was, first, that the Kwantung Army now had
2111 a significant incentive to promote emigration, in order to secure its new
160 Sandra Wilson
territorial gains; second, that Chinese opposition to Japanese attempts to
establish farms could be more readily overcome, by the use of Kwan-
tung Army force; and third, that Manchuria itself had been elevated to a
much higher position in public rhetoric about the Japanese nation. The
only thing that remained was the need to attract Japanese farmers to
emigrate.
Though there was no sound basis for the large-scale emigration of
Japanese farmers to Manchuria in practical terms, the intellectual analysis
which ostensibly provided the foundation of the overall emigration move-
ment was more firmly established. Land was central to this analysis.
Fundamentally, the scholarly argument was that rural poverty had been
produced by over-population and a consequent shortage of land. Internal
and overseas emigration was one of the solutions proposed, though the
more perceptive analysts recognized that emigration was never likely to
prove a realistic solution, and that industrialization was the only real
option in the long term. Most significantly for our purposes here, the
possibility of emigration to Manchuria had been discussed within this
academic and bureaucratic debate during the 1920s, only to be dismissed
by most. Various reasons were offered to justify this position, but one of
the most persuasive was that Japanese farm laborers would not be able
to compete economically with Chinese and Koreans already in Manchuria
because of the very low standard of living of those Chinese and Koreans.
Before September 1931, the scholarly and bureaucratic consensus was
that, if emigration were to be taken seriously at all, then emigrants should
go to Brazil, where at least there was a relatively substantial Japanese
experience of settlement upon which to draw (Wilson 1995: 253–6). Thus,
the academic and bureaucratic discourse before 1931–32, and afterwards
too to some extent, actually emphasized Manchuria’s unsuitability for
Japanese settlement. Nor was there much popular consciousness of
Manchuria in any context.
Nevertheless, a vigorous call went out for emigrants after the Kwantung
Army’s invasion of Manchuria, with the first official group departing
in October 1932, as we have seen. The years 1932–36 are known as the
period of ‘trial emigration’ or ‘armed emigration’ to Manchuria. During
these years five groups of emigrants were sent, comprising a total number
of less than 3,000 households. Their quasi-military function was quite
evident: they were sent to settle areas in northern Manchuria, close to
the border with the Soviet Union and prone to anti-Japanese guerrilla
activity by a variety of forces; they were armed with weapons, including
machine-guns; and the first group, at least, contained some serving
soldiers, while men with military experience continued to be favored
recruits to later groups. In 1936, the government announced a ‘twenty-
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 161
1111 year plan,’ during which one million households, or five million people,
2111 would be sent to Manchuria. Though initial reactions in some areas were
3 promising, the labor shortage produced by the war with China which
4 began in July 1937 soon put paid to the possibility of getting anywhere
5111 near the emigration targets. Government and army did not lessen their
6 attempts to send emigrants, but their efforts met with continual and wors-
7 ening obstacles. In the first five years of the 20-year plan, the number of
8 new Japanese households settled in Manchuria fell more than 22,000 short
9 of the target. Still, that nevertheless meant that 77,600 Japanese house-
1011 holds did go in that period, making a total of roughly 270,000 individuals
1 (Nakamura and Jinno 1995: 63; Kobayashi 1977: 110).
2 The campaign to settle Japanese farmers in Manchuria between 1932
3111 and 1945 has thus been seen by some historians as a sign of the successful
4 mobilization of the people in the service of imperialist goals, with thou-
5 sands of Japanese rushing to join their nation’s colonialist project in
6 northeast China (for example, Young 1998). Others, focusing on the un-
7 deniable fact that numbers of emigrants never reached the desired levels,
8 have branded the emigration project a failure. Wherever the overall
9 emphasis in historical interpretation is placed, however, the early period
20111 of emigration after the Kwantung Army’s takeover of Manchuria needs
1 to be seen in its immediate context, distinct from later years when formal
2 structures were put in place to facilitate recruitment of settlers. In the
3 period immediately after the Manchurian Incident, the emigration move-
4 ment had neither the government sponsorship it achieved after 1936, nor
5111 the complex bureaucratic apparatus to encourage recruitment. Its success
6 therefore depended directly on the ability of the advocates of emigration
7 to persuade suitable individuals to go. While the later period has been
8 analyzed by a number of scholars in terms of the capacity of the emigra-
9 tion apparatus to further the integration of state and imperial society (see
30111 especially Young 1998), in the early 1930s, by contrast, the idea of
1 emigration to Manchuria was presented primarily as one expression of
2 the desire to solve the problem of poverty in the villages. At the same
3 time, there was also a clear nationalist appeal to poor villagers to partic-
4 ipate in a very direct and personal way in securing Japan’s new territorial
5 gains in northeast China.
6 Between 1931 and 1933, however, emigration to Manchuria, as a
7 supposed solution to the rural depression, had to compete not only with
8 settlement in Brazil, but with other, rival solutions which insisted on the
9 possibility of renewal from within the village and the nation. Though
40111 there was a degree of overlap between advocacy of emigration and support
1 of the government’s economic revitalization movement, with some argu-
2111 ing that the former was part of the latter, advocacy of emigration in this
162 Sandra Wilson
period essentially constituted a declaration that life in the villages at home
held no hope. Sometimes, arguments in favor of emigration included an
explicit or implicit rejection of the government’s other strategies. For one
writer, for instance, the economic revitalization movement amounted to
theoretical nonsense with no practical applicability, at least in the present.
Japanese villages were not going to recover from the depression through
the ideology of self-reliance. Further, official speakers supposedly
spreading the message about revitalization mainly went to the big towns
and stayed only briefly. They were not often heard by those who were
most in need of instruction, according to this view, and in any case their
message was too abstract for farmers to understand. ‘In the end all they
do is temporize a bit and relieve the feelings of the people a bit. It would
have to be regarded as very doubtful that they achieve any lasting success’
(Nagata 1933: 51–2, 154).
Emigration to Manchuria, on the other hand, was represented as an
extremely practical solution to the difficulties faced by farmers, which
stemmed above all, it was said, not from lack of rationality and plan-
ning, deficiencies that were addressed in the economic revitalization
movement, but from lack of land. This was a problem which could be
solved instantly in Manchuria, or so the proponents of emigration claimed.

Manchuria in the Japanese imagination: empty land

After September 1931, Japanese settlement of Manchuria was promoted
at the highest levels because the Kwantung Army saw it as a way to
secure areas of strategic importance and to ward off both Chinese guer-
rillas and any military forces which might stray across the Soviet border
and threaten Japanese gains. Though senior army officers were not
always completely confident of the level of rural support for the military
in general (Smith 2001: 168; Wilson 2002: 130–2), in the context of
Manchurian settlement the Kwantung Army was quite prepared to use
country people for its own purposes. As the 1930s progressed, emigra-
tion to Manchuria was also promoted by prefectural and village officials
in certain areas, as a way of reducing surplus population in the villages,
probably also because of a general desire to cooperate with government
policy, and possibly as an anti-revolutionary measure to defuse class
tensions in the village by exporting some of the poorest members (see,
for example, Takahashi 1997; Kimijima 1978; Kobayashi 1977).
The appeal to potential emigrants in the earlier period was based largely
on the prospect of owning land. In Japan, land was scarce in relation to
population, class relations in the village were often strained, and the rural
economy was depressed. Manchuria, on the other hand, was said to have
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 163
1111 land in unlimited quantities, and publicity about emigration was directed
2111 at the poorest farmers, including those who had no land at all. The attrac-
3 tiveness of emigration varied according to the circumstances of the village
4 concerned, but often there was special emphasis on the advantages of
5111 emigration for second and third sons, whose avenues of employment had
6 contracted throughout the 1920s, because of reduced opportunities for
7 agricultural laborers and shrinking job markets in the towns and cities
8 (see, for example, Sunaga 1966: 488; Mori 2001: 202–3). As one adver-
9 tisement for emigration in Nagano Prefecture put it in 1936:
1011
1 Farm land is scarce [here]; each farm household has only about eight
2 tanbu [1.96 acres]. When cocoon prices were high, one could have
3111 a considerable income with eight tanbu, but that is now a dream
4 of the past. . . . Along with rehabilitation of farm households, the
5 problem is to find the way ahead for second and third sons. There
6 is no land to establish branch families, and faced with the present
7 shortage of work, parents and children inevitably lose heart.
8 (Quoted in Kobayashi 1977: 85–6)
9
20111 For many officials, reconstruction of the village depended on dealing with
1 these surplus second and third sons. It is likely, too, that these were the
2 very people considered most likely to cause unrest if they remained in
3 the village with no prospect of improving their lot. Village harmony,
4 then, might be enhanced if they left.
5111 Propaganda about emigration to Manchuria often promised 10 or 20
6 chøbu (24.5 or 49 acres) of land per household. The appeal of such a
7 prospect can be gauged from the fact that in 1933, 68 percent of farm
8 households in Japan (including Hokkaido) owned one chøbu (2.45 acres)
9 or less. Excluding Hokkaido, only 12,500 farm households owned five
30111 chøbu or more (Nihon gakujutsu shinkøkai 1937: 99). In the promise of
1 land and, implicitly, upward mobility, there are striking similarities with
2 other cases: with the view of Australia propagated in Britain during the
3 nineteenth century, and the view of the United States popular in Italy,
4 for example. In each case the destination would be a land of opportunity
5 for those who had no hope at home.
6 A crucial additional element in propaganda about opportunities in
7 Manchuria amounts virtually to the concept of ‘terra nullius.’ The
8 ‘Manchurian paradise’ was consistently represented as a land of ‘empty
9 plains,’ with Japanese propaganda clearly implying that no one lived there,
40111 apart from a few brave Japanese pioneers left over from earlier emigra-
1 tion projects and some incorrigible Chinese ‘bandits.’ As one enthusiast
2111 declared in 1932: ‘the vast virgin plains, unhampered by tradition, are
164 Sandra Wilson
ready to welcome armies of fresh immigrants’ (Hijikata 1932). Settlers
would simply take up previously uncultivated land, and of course, being
Japanese, would quickly make it productive. Thus one writer urged his
fellow villagers in Nagano Prefecture to ‘build [another] Izumida
village in the limitless expanse of the Manchurian plains’ (Matsui 1932).
There was no hint that, in fact, millions of Chinese and others inhabited
the supposedly endless and empty Manchurian plains, and that what
actually happened in many cases was that Japanese settlers forcibly
drove Chinese farmers off their land, and settled on land already long
cultivated.
Much evidence suggests that the apparent availability of large tracts
of land, and the prospect of owning it, were indeed powerful attractions
to potential Japanese emigrants. Popular songs about Manchuria in the
1930s romanticized the idea of an empty land, very often mentioning
sunsets, for example – always sunsets across vast plains affording spec-
tacular and uninterrupted views of the horizon. Snowy expanses of plain
were also popular, as was anything that emphasized space and emptiness,
even loneliness since that implied space and an absence of other people.
Reports from early emigrants echoed the same themes, along with frequent
references to the cold climate of Manchuria. One of the first ‘armed
emigrants’ sent this account of the initial three months of his new life in
northern Manchuria back to his Nagano village:

The loud noise of my boots on the frozen road . . . the majestic sound
of the fixing of my bayonet . . . the voice which challenges, ‘Who
goes there?’ . . . the cold, howling wind cutting straight through me
. . . standing guard alone in the moonlight. . . . The sound of the rifle
firing . . . the cries of donkeys and stray dogs – in such lonely guard
was I occupied.
(Ishii 1933a)

As for land ownership, one emigrant, reminiscing decades later about his
motive for going, said simply, ‘I yearned for ten chøbu of land.’ Another
explained:

I went because I wanted to become the owner of ten chøbu of land.

As the child of a tenant farmer, I had an endless longing for the title
of ‘landowner.’ Since my parents were dead, it was the thing to do
for a second son.

More than one-third of the 57 respondents to this 1975 survey of former

emigrants mentioned rural poverty or being a second or third (or in one
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 165
1111 case, eighth) son as a motive for going to Manchuria (‘Tairiku ni yume
2111 haseta koro’ 1975). There was a cheerful air in Japanese villages, claimed
3 a magazine article in September 1932, because there was so much land
4 available in Manchuria, and farmers were simply awaiting their chance
5111 to go (‘Mada mehana no tsukanu Mansh¨ imin’ 1932: 188–9).
6 In fact, Japanese farmers in Manchuria did not obtain as much land
7 as had been promised, whether in the period of ‘trial emigration’ or the
8 later years of emigration. Survivors of one settlement recall that they held
9 an average of about three chøbu, or 7.35 acres, much more than they had
1011 owned at home but a far cry from the promised 10 or 20 chøbu (Kobayashi
1 1977: 142). Nor, for that matter, did the departure of the emigrants signif-
2 icantly improve the economic situation in their villages in Japan: for one
3111 thing, although the emigrants’ land was supposedly to be redistributed to
4 others who remained, it made little difference as few of those departing
5 had owned much land in the first place. Many, as rural tradesmen, day-
6 laborers, small shopkeepers or tenant-farmers, or as the younger brothers
7 or sons of small landholders, had owned no land at all (for example, Mori
8 2001: 214–15).
9
20111
Taking part in the national vision
1
2 The evidence on emigration to Manchuria leads inescapably to the conclu-
3 sion that self-interest was not the only magnet for emigrants. Presumably,
4 if it had been, emigrants would have preferred to go to Brazil, a much
5111 more stable environment for Japanese settlers. Going to Manchuria, on
6 the other hand, combined an expectation of personal gain with an expres-
7 sion of patriotism. It was a way of supporting state policy, of taking part
8 in the great project of planting Japanese civilization abroad, of guiding
9 more backward people toward modernity. The two types of motivation
30111 – personal and ‘national’ – were probably not clearly separated in the
1 minds of many potential emigrants in any case. Since the late Meiji period,
2 Japanese leaders, officials and civilian ideologues had devoted a great
3 deal of effort to promoting the view that what was good for the nation
4 was good for the individual household, and much rhetoric, as is well
5 known, mentioned family and state in one breath, often maintaining that
6 they were analogous to each other. Emigration to Manchuria, it was now
7 claimed, would further the welfare of both.
8 The rhetoric in Japan about settlement in Manchuria was always ideal-
9 istic, even romantic, and emigrants’ stories indicate that these appeals did
40111 find their mark. The most commonly used rhetorical phrases included
1 not only Manchuria as the ‘paradise’ or ‘new paradise,’ but also, espe-
2111 cially, ‘Manchuria, Japan’s life-line,’ a phrase in which there is an
166 Sandra Wilson
unmistakable emphasis on national needs and goals rather than personal
economic opportunity. Manchuria was said to have limitless potential and
resources of all kinds and Japanese farmers would be the ones to realize
this potential for the sake of the nation. Emigrants could relieve popula-
tion pressure in Japan, grow food in Manchuria to export back to those
who remained behind, and play a part in protecting Japan’s ‘rights and
interests’ in Manchuria. As the audience was told at a memorial service
at the end of 1931 for soldiers killed in Manchuria, ‘The Manchurian-
Mongolian paradise is a huge resource which will support the [Japanese]
nation’ (Kimura 1937a: 167).
To go to Manchuria, however, was to do more than serve the national
interest in a narrow sense. Allegedly it also contributed to Japan’s inter-
national role, playing its part in the construction of a vision of national
identity that transcended geographical boundaries. As Peter Duus has
pointed out, the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere of the later
1930s was considered by Japanese ideologues to be of world-historical
significance and to showcase Japan as a creator of history rather than a
backward country (Duus 1996: xxiii). Rhetoric about settling Manchuria
clearly shows that, for some, consciousness of such a mission predated
the Co-Prosperity Sphere: it was in Manchuria that Japan would show
its attributes as a world-class nation. The emigration campaign strongly
reinforced the notion that Japan could (and should) exist outside the phys-
ical nation – that is, that being Japanese was essentially a spiritual, cultural
and racial thing. As one village official proclaimed, the emigration move-
ment itself was a spiritual movement, whose purpose was ‘to bring out
clearly the fact that we are Japanese’ (Yunoki 1982: 66).
In this sense, emigration provided an emotional focus for a cluster of
issues concerning Japan’s place in the world. From at least the 1920s,
emigration in general had functioned virtually as a symbol of the status
of Japan as a nation. It was closely associated with views of Japan’s
advance into the ranks of the powerful nations, its strength and vitality,
and its equality with Western countries. Great nations were believed
to be nations which sent their people to settle in and develop other
places; certainly, great nations needed more resources than were to be
found within Japan’s borders. The comparison, usually unstated, was
of course with the British Empire, despite the rejection of European
colonialism in official rhetoric from the later 1930s. The more blatant
publicists made this explicit. For example, the Nagano Prefecture activist
Nagata Shigeru (Shigeshi) (1881–1973), an indefatigable advocate of
emigration and author of over a dozen books on Japanese overseas
settlement, wanted Japan to take over where he felt that Great Britain
had left off, as the leading nation of the world. The Japan-centered settle-
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 167
1111 ments Nagata envisaged in Manchuria and Brazil were really bases from
2111 which the Japanese race would eventually expand over the whole of
3 Asia and South America (Nagata 1933: 212–26). Significantly, however,
4 it was only in 1932 that Nagata began to consider Manchuria for Japanese
5111 settlement as well as South America, indicating that his fervor for
6 northeast China was much more strongly related to the Kwantung Army’s
7 new control of the region than to any obvious potential for settlement
8 that he himself might have detected. More modest advocates of emigra-
9 tion maintained – and Western experts often agreed with them – that
1011 the Japanese population needed more space, and as a civilized, vital
1 and growing nation had as much right to it as Western nations had felt
2 they had at an earlier time (Wilson 1995: 253–4). For some, too, emigra-
3111 tion to Japan’s overseas sphere of influence was a way of compensating
4 for the slight from Western nations like Australia, the USA and Canada
5 which had closed their doors to Japanese immigration.
6 In material directed at prospective emigrants, the military agenda was
7 often freely admitted, and appeals were openly made to national pride.
8 Japanese women, for instance, were called upon to take their place as
9 emigrants so that Manchurian women could learn from the sterling
20111 example they would provide through their hard work (‘Mansh¨ shintenchi
1 de wa nøson fujin o motomu’ 1932: 22–3). The efforts of the emigrants
2 more broadly, according to another, would determine whether or not
3 Manchuria truly became Japan’s ‘lifeline,’ since the farmer-settlers
4 would be pioneers in the development of Manchukuo. For Nasu Hiroshi,
5111 Tokyo Imperial University professor of agriculture, Japan would not be
6 able to maintain the rights and interests it legitimately possessed in the
7 region unless a great many settlers went there; by doing so they would
8 also solve Japan’s problem of overpopulation (‘Manmø kaitaku no nøgyø
9 imin zadankai’ 1932: 46–51). Foodstuffs could be grown by settlers in
30111 Manchuria for Japanese consumption instead of imported from foreign
1 countries, enthused an army officer. Mongolian sheep would substitute
2 for imports of wool from Australia, and Manchuria would also pro-
3 vide meat for Japan (Iwasaki 1932: 37). The capacity to grow foodstuffs
4 was in fact of paramount importance, according to Nagata Shigeru.
5 Conceivably, Japanese villages might one day collapse economically; in
6 that case, however, they would be saved by the efforts of the farmer-
7 settlers, who would have built up Manchuria’s agricultural resources to
8 the extent that they could support the entire population of Japan! (Nagata
9 1933: 110–11)
40111 On a grander scale, it was commonly claimed that the Manchurian
1 settlers would contribute to peace in the entire East Asian region, and
2111 by their presence bring order to an unstable part of the world. Some
168 Sandra Wilson
propagandists went much further. Nagata Shigeru wrote that founding a
state in Manchuria, together with a new Japanese model for world civi-
lization in South America, were the twin national missions of the Japanese.
Both enterprises had to be based firmly on Japanese agricultural emigra-
tion, because there was no other way to implant a permanent Japanese
racial influence. In fact, both the sound development of Manchuria and
the maintenance of peaceful relations between Japan and Manchuria absol-
utely required that a minimum of five million, and preferably 15 million
Japanese people should move to Manchuria, the great majority of them
to engage in agriculture (Nagata 1933: 212–26). Similarly, another writer
opined that emigration – though not necessarily to Manchuria – was
necessary to develop and expand the ‘superior Yamato race’ (‘Kaigai ij¨
gappø’ 1934: 11).
A specific vision of racial harmony also informed the idealistic version
of Japan’s potential contribution to Manchuria. To an extent this contra-
dicted the idea of empty plains awaiting immigrants, because it recognized
the existence of a number of different ethnic groups already there. Official
Manchukuo ideology did stress ‘racial harmony,’ however, and the Japan-
ese role within this scheme was clear: it was to lead and guide the other
races and to bring rationality and organization to Manchurian agricultural
management. The publicist Nagata, who by 1934 was working for the
Kwantung Army, offered a striking metaphor. Manchuria, he wrote,
was like a concrete structure, with the Chinese the stones, the Koreans
the sand, and the Russians and Mongolians the water. No matter how
they were mixed, stones, sand and water would not make concrete. It
could not be done without the Japanese race as the cement. It did not
apparently occur to him that each of the other elements was equally indis-
pensable (Nagata 1933: 214–15). A more cultured version of the same
idea referred specifically to the relations between Japanese and Chinese
settlers, alluding to their common Confucian heritage. One village head
advised 42 emigrants about to leave Miyagi Prefecture for Manchuria in
1932 to teach and to ‘improve’ the people of Manchuria, becoming their
elder brothers, teachers and friends. They should study the Analects of
Confucius and guide the natives kindly on the basis of the ethics it
contained (Kimura 1937b: 209–12).
Potential emigrants seemingly did respond to the appeal to participate
in a great patriotic undertaking. Many of the 57 former emigrants in the
1975 survey mentioned above (‘Tairiku ni yume haseta koro’ 1975) said
they had wanted to support state policy: they went to ‘develop the new
paradise,’ to produce food for Japan, or simply because it was national
policy. When the movement to send ‘brides’ for the settlers got under
way in the later 1930s many of those young women, too, went for
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 169
1111 patriotic reasons according to their later reminiscences (Jinno 1992).
2111 Again, reports from emigrants in the first groups emphasized the
3 same themes. One wrote that he had gone to build a new Japan, and
4 promote friendship between Japan and Manchuria (‘Dokusha kurabu’
5111 1933: 188). Another settler proudly assured his fellow villagers at home
6 that ‘even in the remote areas . . . with their boundless space and dense
7 fields of sorghum waving in the breeze, the Japanese flag flies high
8 in the sky every day’ (Ishii 1933a). Several months later he reported
9 that his group had at last reached the area allocated to it for farming,
1011 listing the number and type of animals and plows the settlers possessed
1 and the crops that would be grown. All the people who formerly lived
2 within the cultivated area, he noted laconically, had moved. For this
3111 young Japanese settler, however, watching their dispossession was a
4 lesson in power politics rather than an occasion to reflect on the hypocrisy
5 of those who told people at home that Manchuria was an empty land:
6 ‘Every day they are loading up with their household goods and leaving.
7 It makes me acutely aware of how pitiful it is to have a weak country’
8 (Ishii 1933b).
9
20111
Criticism of the emigration campaign
1
2 Despite the efforts of enthusiasts inside and outside of the Kwantung
3 Army, the promotion of emigration from rural areas to Manchuria in the
4 early 1930s attracted a certain level of criticism as well as a large amount
5111 of indifference. The negative view held by scholarly and bureaucratic
6 experts continued to be expressed, though no doubt more cautiously
7 after the Manchurian Incident than during the 1920s. The economist
8 Ueda Teijirø, for example, who believed that Manchuria’s resources were
9 not in fact extensive, told Kwantung Army officers in January 1932 that
30111 there was little prospect there for Japanese settlers, and that, instead,
1 Japan should welcome Chinese settlers to the region (Ueda 1963: 168).
2 Similarly, for the influential liberal economist and journalist Ishibashi
3 Tanzan, the idea that Japanese in any numbers could live in Manchuria
4 was an ‘absurd notion’ which, if pursued, would produce a large number
5 of victims on the one hand, and very few benefits on the other. Ishibashi
6 took issue with all the standard arguments about advantages Japan could
7 gain from the exploitation of Manchuria, adding that any economic pros-
8 perity which might eventually result from the development of the region
9 rightfully belonged to its existing inhabitants, not to an outside power
40111 (Ishibashi 1996).
1 In the villages too, some were clearly critical. In Izumida village in
2111 Chiisagata-gun, Nagano Prefecture, one writer sought to debunk the
170 Sandra Wilson
propaganda about opportunities in Manchuria. An earlier article in the
young men’s association newspaper produced in the village had shown
considerable enthusiasm about the cheap labor available in Manchuria,
citing the low wages of adult males as a positive factor from Japan’s
point of view. The second writer responded: ‘I cannot condemn the writer,
with his vision of being a splendid rural landowner through the use of
cheap labor; but I would like him to be aware that we too are “adult
males.”’ Manchuria, he continued,

is certainly not the paradise dreamt of here. The only role allotted to
us over there is to spend our blood and sweat in toil. Dreams of
success without that hardship should be left to people like party politi-
cians and the zaibatsu.
(‘Utsuriyuku jidai no sø’ 1932)

In January 1933, young men in Aoki village, also in Chiisagata-gun in

Nagano Prefecture, denounced attempts by the authorities to raise money
to send emigrants to a new settlement in Manchukuo. Their objections
were both practical and ideological. On the one hand, they pointed out
that villagers could not afford to raise the 201 yen required as the contri-
bution from Aoki. On the other, they believed that the campaign to ‘protect
Japan’s rights and interests’ in Manchuria was no more than a disguised
attack on Soviet and Chinese communism and should therefore not be
supported in any case (quoted in Ide 1991: 43–5). In more personal terms,
one village school principal, as Mori Takemaro shows, rejected all the
rhetoric about noble service by Japanese settlers in Manchuria. To him,
the emigrants had simply been ‘discarded’ by their homeland. The prin-
cipal himself was adamantly opposed to ‘abandoning young people to
Manchuria,’ and refused to have anything to do with the campaign (Mori
2001: 211–12).
By the end of 1932, in fact, key institutions in the countryside had
lost interest in the movement to send farmers to Manchuria, in view of
the serious obstacles encountered by those who did go, and perhaps
because of the early signs that the Japanese economy was beginning to
recover from the depression. There was a general admission that ‘emigra-
tion to Manchuria in 1932 ended in failure’ (‘Mansh¨, Burajiru tokøsha
no tame ni mono o tazuneru kai’ 1933), and warnings were issued to
prospective emigrants against excessive eagerness. It might take a long
time, advocates of emigration now acknowledged, for Manchuria to
achieve its destiny as a ‘paradise’ for Japan. The agricultural coopera-
tive (sangyø kumiai) movement and the Imperial Agricultural Association
lost interest in the campaign, maintaining a quite critical stance toward
 Japanese farmers and Manchuria, 1931–33 171
1111 it until emigration to Manchuria became government policy in 1936. Few
2111 officials in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry or the Home Ministry
3 had ever shown interest in the project, and in fact there was little support
4 from any part of the government at this stage (Takahashi 1997: 115–16;
5111 Wilson 1998: 128–30). Government support for emigration to Brazil, on
6 the other hand, continued. The national budget for 1933–34 included
7 5,744,749 yen for the protection and encouragement of emigrants and
8 for colonization enterprises, most of it earmarked for Brazil. By contrast,
9 a separate item of just 382,075 yen was allocated for emigration to
1011 Manchuria (Grew 1933). Most significantly of all, there was little interest
1 on the part of the rural population itself. For the great majority of Japanese,
2 life at home was preferable, no matter how precarious. As one diplomat
3111 observed, ‘in spite of all inducements, the average Japanese farmer would
4 rather cinch in his belt and stay on his own acre of rice paddy than adven-
5 ture to the ends of the earth after greater riches’ (McClintock 1933: 27).
6 Those who did choose to emigrate continued to prefer Brazil, with its
7 relatively established Japanese population, rather than Manchuria.
8
9
Conclusion
20111
1 Propaganda about emigration to Manchuria was directed at both farmers
2 and decision-makers, in order to encourage the first group to emigrate
3 and the second to provide support for the project. The call for emigrants
4 was directed firmly at poor farmers. Ironically, however, by the time
5111 the campaign got seriously under way, it was no longer necessary to
6 consider such drastic solutions to poverty. Conditions in the countryside
7 had improved somewhat, with rises in prices for agricultural goods. By
8 1936, the price of both silk cocoons and rice was more than one-and-a-
9 half times higher than in 1931 (Banno 1997: 219). Then, the outbreak of
30111 full-scale war with China in July 1937 produced a labor shortage which
1 made nonsense of the argument that Japan required emigration as a solu-
2 tion for overpopulation, as young people from the villages were drawn
3 into the military or to the munitions factories in the cities. By 1941–42,
4 land was standing uncultivated in some areas because of the labor short-
5 age, and landlords, fearing further labor shortages and a fall in both
6 land values and rents, were opposing emigration (Sunaga 1966: 488;
7 Mori 2001: 211). In the ultimate irony, Chinese and Korean laborers
8 brought forcibly to Japan began to be put to work, sometimes in the very
9 places from which farmers were being persuaded to go to Manchuria in
40111 order to alleviate the ‘population problem’ (Kobayashi 1977: 109). The
1 Kwantung Army’s desire to promote settlement in Manchuria hardly less-
2111 ened, however, and emigration remained an important government policy,
172 Sandra Wilson
with publicity appealing to both patriotism and economic self-interest
continuing in the villages throughout the war. As late as 1941, the
following appeared in a journal aimed at prospective emigrants:

If you become a Manchurian pioneer, you can be an owner-farmer

with ten chøbu, and you will see permanent prosperity for your
descendants. Manchuria itself is the basis of the East Asian Co-
Prosperity Sphere. Manchuria, where 100,000 [Japanese] lives have
been lost, must be protected with our hoes . . . . There is no way to
revive the villages other than developing Manchuria.
(Kobayashi Hitoshi 1941, quoted in Kimijima 1978: 302)

The myth of Manchuria as the place that would cure all the personal and
national ills suffered in Japan thus proved to be an enduring one, even
in circumstances which provided remarkably little justification for such
claims.

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Tokyo: Høsø daigaku kyøiku shinkøkai.
‘Dokusha kurabu’. 1933. Ie no hikari (February): 188.
Duus, Peter. 1996. ‘Introduction/Japan’s Wartime Empire: Problems and Issues’.
In The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945, ed. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Myers
and Mark R. Peattie. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Grew, Joseph. 1933. Ambassador Joseph Grew to Secretary of State, monthly
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Hashimoto Jurø. 1984. Dai kyøkøki no Nihon shihonshugi. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
shuppankai.
Hijikata Seiji. 1932. ‘New Manchurian State Makes Good Beginning’. Trans-
Pacific (April 7): 17. (Originally published in Ch¨ø køron.)
Ide Magoroku. 1991. Owarinaki tabi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Ishibashi Tanzan. 1996. ‘Shina ni taisuru tadashiki ninshiki to seisaku’. Tøyø keizai
shinpø (February 6, 1932). In Dai Nippon shugi to no tøsø (Ishibashi Tanzan
chøsakush¨ 3: seiji gaikø ron), ed. Kamo Takehiko. Tokyo: Tøyø keizai shin-
pøsha.
Ishii Uichi. 1933a. Izumida jihø (February): 1.
–––– 1933b. ‘Iyoiyo katsudø o kaishi shita’. Izumida jihø (May): 1.
Iwasaki Tamio. 1932. ‘Shihonka ya seitøshary¨ no Mansh¨ ni suruna no koe’. Ie
no hikari (June): 37.
Jinno Morimasa. 1992. ‘Mansh¨’ ni okurareta onnatachi: tairiku no hanayome.
Tokyo: Nashi no kisha.
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1111 ‘Kaigai ij¨ gappø’. 1934. Ie no hikari (February): 11–17.
2111 Kimijima Kazuhiko. 1978. ‘Fashizumuka nøson ni okeru Mansh¨ imin: Hanishina-
3 gun bungø imin no jisshi katei’. In Nihon fashizumu no keisei to nøson, ed. Øe
4 Shinobu. Tokyo: Azekura shobø.
5111 Kimura Tadashi. 1937a. ‘Dai nikai ireisai ni ikeru saimon’ (December 18, 1931).
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sensei køensh¨ Sonchø j¨nen kankøkai. Sendai.
7 –––– 1937b. ‘Mansh¨ shimin shokun o okuru’ (October 2, 1932). In Kimura
8 Tadashi sensei køensh¨ ‘Sonchø j¨nen’, ed. and publ. Kimura Tadashi sensei
9 køensh¨ Sonchø j¨nen kankøkai. Sendai.
1011 Kobayashi Køji. 1977. Mansh¨ imin no mura. Tokyo: Chikuma shobø.
1 ‘Mada mehana no tsukanu Mansh¨ imin: saikin senkushita imin no hanashi’. 1932.
2 Ie no hikari (September): 188–9.
3111 ‘Manmø kaitaku no nøgyø imin zadankai’. 1932. Ie no hikari (May): 46–51.
4 ‘Mansh¨, Burajiru tokøsha no tame ni mono o tazuneru kai’. 1933. Ie no hikari
5 (March): 110–19.
‘Mansh¨ shintenchi de wa nøson fujin o motomu’. 1932. Nøson fujin 1(3) (May):
6
22–3.
7 Matsui Masao. 1932. ‘Akeyuku Manmø’. Izumida jihø (March): 1.
8 McClintock, Robert Mills (US Vice-Consul, Kobe). 1933. ‘Japanese Emigration
9 to Brazil’. November 1, 1933. United States National Archives, Washington DC,
20111 Record Group 59, M/F: LM 058, Roll 25, 894.56/69: 1–28.
1 Mori Takemaro. 1999. Senji Nihon nøson shakai no kenky¨. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
2 shuppankai.
3 –––– 2001. ‘Mansh¨ imin: teikoku no susono’. In Rekishi ga ugoku toki: ningen
4 to sono jidai, ed. Rekishi kagaku kyøgikai. Tokyo: Aoki shoten, pp. 197–224.
5111 Nagata Shigeru. 1933. Nøson jinkø mondai to ishokumin. Tokyo: Nippon hyøronsha.
6 Nakamura Masanori. 1988. Shøwa no kyøkø. Tokyo: Shogakkan.
–––– 1989. Shøwa kyøkø (Iwanami bukkuretto, shiriizu Shøwashi, No. 1). Tokyo:
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Iwanami shoten.
8 –––– and Jinno Morimasa. 1995. ‘Ashitaka-mura Mansh¨ nøgyø imin’. Numazu-
9 shishikenky¨ (4): 61–89.
30111 Nihon gakujutsu shinkøkai. 1937. Mansh¨ imin mondai to jisseki chøsa. Tokyo:
1 Nihon gakujutsu shinkøkai.
2 Patrick, Hugh T. 1971. ‘The Economic Muddle of the 1920s’. In Dilemmas of
3 Growth in Prewar Japan, ed. James William Morley. Princeton: Princeton
4 University Press.
5 Smith, Kerry. 2001. A Time of Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural
6 Revitalization. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.
Sunaga Shigemitsu (ed.). 1966. Kindai Nihon no jinushi to nømin: suitø tansaku
7
nøgyø no keizaigakuteki kenky¨ – Nangø-mura. Tokyo: Ochanomizu shobø.
8 ‘Tairiku ni yume haseta koro: ky¨ Manmø kaitaku seishønen giy¨gun Tønei daiichi
9 ch¨taiin ni kiku’. 1975. In Ichiokunin no Shøwashi, Vol. 1: Mansh¨ jihen zengo
40111 – koritsu e no michi. Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1975, pp. 175–8.
1 Takahashi Yasutaka. 1997. Shøwa senzenki no nøson to Mansh¨ imin. Tokyo:
2111 Yoshikawa købunkan.
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Ueda Teijirø. 1963. Ueda Teijirø nikki, Vol. 3. Tokyo: Ueda Teijirø nikki kankøkai.
‘Utsuriyuku jidai no sø: takanaru fassho køshinkyoku’. 1932. Izumida jihø
(September): 4.
Wilson, Sandra. 1995. ‘The “New Paradise”: Japanese Emigration to Manchuria
in the 1930s and 1940s’. International History Review 17(2): 249–86.
–––– 1998. ‘Bureaucrats and Villagers in Japan: Shimin and the Crisis of the Early
1930s’. Social Science Japan Journal 1(1): 121–40.
–––– 2002. The Manchurian Crisis and Japanese Society, 1931–33. London:
Routledge.
Young, Louise. 1998. Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime
Imperialism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yunoki Shun’ichi. 1982. ‘Mansh¨ imin undø no tenkai to ronri: Miyagi-ken Nangø-
mura imin undø no bunseki’. Shakai keizaishigaku 48(3): 52–71.
1111
2111 8 Colonies and countryside in
3 wartime Japan
4
5111
6 Mori Takemaro
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
Introduction
5 This chapter explores the relationship between rural villages in Japan and
6 Japan’s colonies during the wartime period, with particular reference to
7 the emigration of Japanese farmers to Manchuria (Manchukuo). For a
8 thorough understanding of this relationship it would be necessary to
9 consider capital and commodities as well as labor, but here I confine my
20111 attention only to labor, in the form of the movement of people. My aim
1 is to identify some of the key characteristics of Japanese emigration during
2 this period and, by means of a comparison with emigration to Korea at
3 roughly the same time, to reveal some of the distinctive features of the
4 Manchurian case. I will focus mainly on Yamato Village in Yamagata
5111 Prefecture. The prefecture itself ranked second in the nation as a source
6 of emigrants to Manchuria, and the village ranked with Øhinata Village
7 in Nagano Prefecture and Nangø Village in Miyagi Prefecture as one of
8 the top three villages nationwide in terms of the total number of emigrants
9 produced.
30111
1
2
The Rural Economic Revitalization Campaign
3 The rural crisis engendered by the Showa Depression in the early1930s
4 proved a historical turning point for Japan, paving the way for war and
5 fascism. The collapse of farming operations brought about by a sharp
6 increase in the debts owed by farm households threatened to destabilize
7 rural society, and the agonizing impoverishment of the countryside figured
8 as a rationale in attempted coups d’état by young officers in the Imperial
9 Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army from the May 15th Incident
40111 of 1932 to the February 26th Incident of 1936. To cope with the rural
1 crisis, the government encouraged farmers to commit themselves to
2111 what was called the ‘Rural Economic Revitalization Campaign,’ the basic
176 Mori Takemaro
principle of which was economic recovery by means of the self-help
efforts of farmers themselves. As later attempts by the government to
promote emigration to Manchuria, in particular the plan announced in
1936 to send one million Japanese farm households there over a 20-year
period, were carried out as part of this campaign, it would be useful to
begin by summarizing its main features (Mori 1999; see also the chapter
by Smith in this volume.)
The Rural Revitalization Campaign was launched in 1932 as a means
of dealing with the effects of the depression. As part of the campaign,
the government designated 76 percent of all towns and villages in the
country as revitalization localities, and farmers were urged to reconstruct
their villages on the basis of self-help. From late 1938 onward, the
campaign shifted from promoting recovery from the depression to
increasing food production, functioning thereafter as part of wartime
controls over agriculture.
The first goal of the campaign was the clearing of farm household
debt, and one important measure in this direction was encouraging farmers
to keep detailed accounts of their income and expenditure. By doing so,
farmers were expected to learn the theory and practice of ‘rational manage-
ment’ and take steps to improve their operations. One consequence would
be greater diversification, with the introduction of such new commercial
crops as fruits, vegetables and livestock in those parts of the country that
had specialized in sericulture in the past. At the same time, the commer-
cial activities of farmers that had developed fairly autonomously in the
1920s would be increasingly influenced by the state. As a result, ‘the
agriculture of rice and silk’ that had prevailed in the countryside to that
point gradually became less uniformly structured, and the basis for devel-
opment of a wide range of new commercial crops in the postwar era
was created.
The second goal of the campaign was the ‘planned and systematic
renewal’ of the countryside, with a key institutional role assigned to the
industrial cooperatives (sangyø kumiai) that were to be revivified in
those villages where they already existed and established where none had
yet been formed. This paved the way for the postwar development of
the agricultural cooperative unions (nøgyø kyødø kumiai, or nøkyø).
At the same time, the government also put great emphasis on linking the
hamlets within each village to the village’s industrial cooperative, and
the farm practice associations (nøji jikkø kumiai) that were formed in
hamlets at this time functioned as the lowest unit of state control measures
during wartime.
The third goal of the Rural Revitalization Campaign was to nurture
‘village mainstays’ (nøson ch¨ken jinbutsu) as the agents of its policies
 Wartime Japan 177
1111 in the countryside. Most of those recruited for this role were middling
2111 farmers, that is, owner-cultivators with fairly typical holdings for the
3 area or farmers from the upper ranks of local owner-tenants. Some had
4 been active in hamlet youth groups in the 1920s and were still quite
5111 young. Others were older, veterans of the tenancy disputes of the previous
6 decade or of other local efforts to improve farming and raise living stan-
7 dards. They were sent for training at Kato Kanji’s well-known private
8 academy, the Japan National Higher Level School (Nihon kokumin køtø
9 gakkø) in Tomobe, not far from the city of Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture,
1011 and, later on, to the farmers’ training centers (nømin døjø) which the
1 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had established throughout the
2 country, where a concerted effort was made to indoctrinate them with
3111 emperor-centered nationalism and agrarianism (nøhonshugi), the central
4 ideologies of state-sponsored rural revitalization. This had the effect
5 of distancing middling farmers from various campaigns influenced by
6 socialist thought and such specific concerns of the tenant movement in
7 which some of them had been involved as rent reductions and security
8 of cultivating rights, instead mobilizing them in service to what was
9 portrayed as the national interest.
20111 Those who would coordinate the activities of village mainstays at the
1 local level were designated ‘village leaders’ (nøson ch¨shin jinbutsu),
2 but they did not come from the largest local landowning families that
3 had monopolized village leadership positions hitherto. On the contrary,
4 they represented the new leadership stratum that had developed within
5111 many villages by the late 1920s, a sort of ‘local intelligentsia’ consisting
6 primarily of the sons of small and medium-sized cultivating landlords
7 who possessed higher than average educational qualifications. Many were
8 graduates of agricultural schools or had completed training courses in
9 farming, working thereafter as technicians in local agricultural associa-
30111 tions or as organizers of industrial cooperatives. Once the depression
1 had ended, they rose to such posts as village mayors, deputy mayors and
2 officials of local agricultural associations. They therefore played key roles
3 both in efforts at rural revitalization during the harsh years of the depres-
4 sion, defending the interests of middling farmers in ways that the former
5 leadership elite of large, non-cultivating landlords would not necessarily
6 have found congenial, and in the implementation at the local level of
7 subsequent control measures during wartime.
8 In contrast to rural revitalization, which sought domestic solutions to
9 the crisis of the countryside in the depression years, policies promoting
40111 emigration to Manchuria sought to defuse the crisis by exporting one
1 perceived cause of it: the surplus population of Japanese villages. In the
2111 next section I will trace the evolution of these emigration policies from
178 Mori Takemaro
their inception in the early 1930s to the announcement in 1936 of the
government’s plan to send one million emigrant households to Manchuria.

Official promotion of emigration to Manchuria

Policies promoting emigration to Manchuria began in the aftermath of
the Manchurian Incident of September 1931 and the subsequent founding
of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in March 1932, these poli-
cies reflecting the military and political needs of running Manchuria as
a de facto Japanese colony. Of course, the rural poverty caused by the
depression also played a part, so it can be said that in emigration to
Manchuria a linkage of war and the plight of the Japanese countryside
occurred (Asada 1976: 104–7).
Before further discussion of the case of Manchuria, it will be helpful
to outline the general contours of twentieth-century emigration from
Japan. As shown in Figure 8.1, the number of Japanese immigrants resi-
dent in such Japanese colonies as Korea, Karafuto (southern Sakhalin),
Taiwan and southern Manchuria (a Japanese leasehold since 1905) began
to increase in the years following the Russo-Japanese War. During the
1920s, the increase in Korea was particularly striking, rising from about
300,000 in the late 1910s to almost 600,000 in 1930. During the 1930s,
however, the most striking increase took place in Manchuria, with the
total number of Japanese immigrants resident there surpassing the number
in Korea in about 1935. In addition, we can also see that the number of
Japanese immigrants resident in China proper escalated from a fairly low
level from the mid-1930s on, especially after the outbreak of hostilities
between China and Japan in 1937. That is to say, it is clear that from
about 1930 onward the balance shifted from emigration to Korea, Karafuto
and Taiwan to emigration to Manchuria and China proper, with the
number of Japanese resident in Manchuria rising from 200,000 in 1930
to 1,000,000 in 1940. Turning now to destinations beyond Japan’s colo-
nial empire, it is apparent that the number of Japanese immigrants resident
in North America increased until the mid-1920s, but stabilized after
passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 in the United States, one of the
chief aims of which was to end immigration from Japan. From about that
time, an increasing number of Japanese began to emigrate to Central and
South America. During the initial four decades of the century, then, there
were two main categories of emigration from Japan: that destined for
Japan’s formal and informal empire and that destined for the Americas.
The former consisted of ‘colonists’ backed by national policy, and the
latter consisted of ‘economic migrants’ who sought to improve their lives
and who received relatively little in the way of official encouragement
 Wartime Japan 179
1111
2111
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
30111
1
2
3 Figure 8.1 Japanese emigrants by destination.
4 Source: Takahashi Yasutaka, Shøwa sensenki no nøson to Mansh¨ imin (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
købunkan, 1997), p. 13.
5
6
7 (Takahashi 1997: 4). That Manchuria was the focus of emigration during
8 the 1930s is also clear.
9 Now, let us move on to a brief overview of emigration to Manchuria.
40111 In July 1932, a little more than a month after the May 15th Incident,
1 Captain Tømiya Kaneo, a subordinate to Ishiwara Kanji on the staff of
2111 the Kwantung Army, and the agrarianist Katø Kanji met in Japan and
180 Mori Takemaro

decided that a program of emigration to Manchuria was desirable. Katø

(1888–1967) was to play a key role in bringing that program about. After
graduating from the Faculty of Agriculture at Tokyo Imperial University
he had worked part-time for the Home Ministry and the Imperial
Agricultural Association before becoming a teacher in 1913 at the Anjø
School of Farming and Forestry, which was directed then by the well-
known agrarianist Yamazaki Nobukichi. While there, Katø became a
devotee of the ‘Ancient Shinto’ teachings of Kakei Katsuhiko, which
stressed commitment to the emperor and to farming as the essence of the
Japanese spirit, and to put these teachings into practice Katø established
his own school in Kamiyama, Yamagata Prefecture in 1915. By 1925,
he had embarked on the Ogino reclamation project in nearby Shinjø, with
support from the War Ministry, as a means of providing plots of land to
the non-inheriting second and third sons of farm families in the prefec-
ture. The community of new settlers that resulted from this project would
later be used as a model for the subsequent Japanese settlement of
Manchuria. Katø had thought the Manchurian Incident provided an excel-
lent opportunity to provide much greater opportunities for Japanese
farmers, and with the help of Ishiguro Tadaatsu, then Vice-Minister of
Agriculture, he had been able to present his case for a concerted policy
of emigration to Manchuria to the Ministry of Colonial Affairs in January
1932. He would organize an Imperial Farmers’ Corps of emigrants in as
many villages as possible, those corps to be led by local village leaders
(ch¨shin jinbutsu) and mainstay farmers (ch¨ken jinbutsu).
The May 15th Incident, in which some civilian agrarianists had also
taken part, triggered a flood of petitions from groups representing farmers
to politicians and bureaucrats demanding attention to rural relief, and
among the demands put forward by the Local Autonomy Farmers’
Conference (Jichi nømin kyøgikai) was 50 million yen in state aid for
emigration to Manchuria. A much more modest appropriation of 200,000
yen ‘to conduct feasibility studies on the farming and other economic
opportunities available to those who went to Manchuria’ was approved
by the Diet in 1932, sitting in an emergency session known as ‘the
Rural Rescue Diet.’ Emigration to Manchuria as a national policy began
thereafter.
Among the very first to emigrate, beginning in October 1932, were
70 trainees from Katø Kanji’s Japan National Higher Level School in
Ibaraki, all of them carrying guns. In May 1936, in the aftermath of the
February 26th Incident, the Kwantung Army and the Ministry of Colonial
Affairs formulated a proposal ‘for the dispatch of one million farm
households to Manchuria,’ which was approved by the Hirota Cabinet
as a 20-year plan in August 1936. In November, the Hirota Cabinet also
 Wartime Japan 181
1111 approved a plan to send ‘volunteer youth corps’ to Manchuria (Manmø
2111 kaitaku seishønen giy¨dan). Both plans were to be implemented from
3 1937. In this way, emigration policy evolved in two phases, the first after
4 the May 15th Incident and the second after the February 26th Incident.
5111 On March 11, 1936, just after the February 26th Incident, Katø Kanji
6 met with Tanaka Nagashige, head of the Economic Revitalization Section
7 within the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. It is worth quoting at
8 some length from the record of their conversation:
9
1011 Katø: On the question of land, there’s plenty available [in
1 Manchuria] now at one or two yen per tan. Worrying about
2 what we’d do if the price rises, the way some people do,
3111 makes no sense at all. In my opinion, we should just get
4 on with it as quickly as possible. The Chinese and the
5 Koreans don’t bother trying to find out who owns the land
6 they want. They just move in and take it over. If we waste
7 time trying to track down owners and agree prices, we’ll
8 get left behind. The first group of armed emigrants didn’t
9 buy land before they left Japan, they bought it after they
20111 arrived. In Manchuria, no one knows who owns which
1 parcels of land. If we Japanese don’t get cracking, the
2 Koreans and the Chinese will grab all the land there is.
3 Tanaka: (Laughing) It sounds like theft to me.
4 Katø: The conditions over there are not like those here at home.
5111 If you call what I’m talking about ‘theft,’ then you’d have
6 to be against war, too, because war also involves theft as
7 well as killing.
8 Tanaka: (Laughing) You know, you sound like the head of a band
9 of thieves to me.
30111 (Ide 1986: 85–6)
1
2 As the above quotation from the record makes clear, the two men did
3 not agree about emigration to Manchuria. Whereas Katø insisted that the
4 Japanese should acquire land there as quickly as possible and get on with
5 Japanese settlement, Tanaka was highly skeptical. His stance was typical
6 of the prevailing stance among most high-ranking Ministry of Agriculture
7 and Forestry officials, where the entire venture was seen not only as likely
8 to involve ‘theft on a grand scale’ but also as of dubious benefit to the
9 Japanese settlers themselves on account of the difficulties they would
40111 face in operating their farms if and when they got them. In fact, it can
1 be said that it was the military (especially the Kwantung Army) and the
2111 Ministry of Colonial Affairs that played the most active role in promoting
182 Mori Takemaro
the emigration project, and that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
was more or less carried along in their wake. That said, there were high-
ranking officials in the latter ministry such as Ishiguro Tadaatsu and
Kodaira Gonichi who did actively support Katø’s project in the expec-
tation that the dispatch of settlers abroad would contribute to relief of
agrarian distress at home by freeing up land that could be redistributed
among the remaining farmers, enabling them to expand their scale of
operations.
Yet the essence of the emigration policy announced in 1936 lay not
in the rescue of impoverished farmers, but in military necessity, as the
following list of purposes makes clear (Yamada 1978). First of all, the
bolstering of national defense. For the military, emigration to Manchuria
was seen as ‘the most important policy at present for defense of the nation
and the realization of national objectives.’ More specifically, it was
needed: (1) to defend the South Manchurian Railway and areas experi-
encing raids by anti-Japanese forces; (2) to defend Japan against the
Soviet Union, by the settlement of immigrants in northern Manchuria,
especially near the border; (3) to insure that the ‘Yamato race’ would
form the core race among the ‘five races in harmonious coexistence’ in
the region; and (4) to provide for the defense of Manchuria’s heavy indus-
tries. At the time, given these functions, Japanese emigrants to Manchuria
were described as ‘human pillboxes’ (ningen-tøchika). Second, as a step
toward the achievement of autarky. Japanese settlers were needed in
Manchuria to provide Japan with feed for livestock and with improved
stock breeds, and eventually with such staple foodstuffs as rice, wheat,
and maize. More immediately, they were needed to guarantee self-
sufficiency in food supplies for the rest of the Japanese population in
Manchuria and for the Kwantung Army.
Third (and last of all), as a means of solving the problem of over-
population in Japanese villages, which was widely regarded as a major
cause of rural poverty, by sending the most marginal farmers – especially
those with holdings of five tan or less – abroad as settlers. The Ministry
of Agriculture and Forestry agreed to support emigration largely for this
reason and set about encouraging villages to divide residents into two
groups, one of which would emigrate and establish a ‘branch village’ in
Manchuria and the other of which would take over the vacated holdings,
thus expanding the scale of their operations and prospering at last.
A fairly simple calculation underlay the target figure of one million
emigrant households: at an average of five family members per house-
hold, that was the number needed to insure that 10 percent of the
population in Manchuria, which was projected to reach 50 million at
the end of 20 years, would be Japanese. To achieve that target it would
 Wartime Japan 183
1111 be necessary to get somewhat over half of the 1.86 million households
2111 farming less than five tan as of the mid-1930s to emigrate over the next
3 two decades. As there were about 5.5 million farm households in Japan
4 at the time, the plan required getting roughly 20 percent of them to
5111 emigrate.
6 In the eight years between 1937 and Japan’s defeat in 1945, however,
7 the total number of emigrants to Manchuria amounted to only 320,000,
8 and at that rate, the goal of five million in 20 years’ time would never
9 have been achieved. In that respect, the policy of Manchurian emigra-
1011 tion was an obvious failure.
1 Most Japanese emigrants ended up either in northern Manchuria, near
2 the Amur River which marked the border with the Soviet Union, or in
3111 Dairen, Changchun and Harbin, near the South Manchurian Railway line.
4 That they were concentrated there, rather than in the rural hinterland of
5 southern Manchuria where it was possible to grow rice, shows that the
6 Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s concern with the economic oppor-
7 tunities available to migrating farmers was subordinated to the strategic
8 concerns of the army. Granted, there were great stretches of unexploited
9 land in the plains of northern Manchuria, but as in Manchuria as a whole
20111 virtually all of the land that was suitable for agriculture had already been
1 occupied by Chinese, Manchurian or Korean farmers. The Public
2 Corporation for the Development of Manchuria (Mansh¨ kaitaku køsha)
3 was able to get those farmers to sell their holdings at very low prices
4 and pass them on to Japanese settlers only because the Kwantung Army
5111 stood behind it, willing to apply force as and when necessary. In other
6 words, the policy of emigration to Manchuria was indeed founded on
7 pillage, or ‘theft on a grand scale.’
8
9
Emigration to Manchuria and rural Japan
30111
1 To begin with, let us look at the distribution of emigrants by prefecture.
2 As shown in Table 8.1, Nagano Prefecture produced the largest number
3 of emigrants. Yamagata Prefecture came a distant second, and Kumamoto
4 Prefecture ranked third. Next came Fukushima, Niigata and Miyagi
5 Prefectures. Overall, emigrants came primarily from the sericultural
6 regions of central Japan, as exemplified by Nagano, and from the Tohoku
7 region. To a degree, this reflected the fact that farmers in those regions
8 had been hardest hit by the depression.
9 Although there were relatively few emigrants from southwestern Japan,
40111 two prefectures in that part of Japan did rank highly: Kumamoto as third
1 and Hiroshima, eighth. This was probably because these two prefectures
2111 had sent a lot of people to North and South America and, when the
184 Mori Takemaro
Table 8.1 Prefectural origins of emigrants to Manchuria

Rank Prefecture Number of Rank Prefecture Number of

emigrants emigrants
1 Nagano 37,859 13 Gumma 8,775
2 Yamagata 17,177 14 Aomori 8,365
3 Kumamoto 12,680 15 Kagawa 7,885
4 Fukushima 12,673 16 Ishikawa 7,271
5 Niigata 12,641 17 Yamaguchi 6,508
6 Miyagi 12,419 18 Iwate 6,436
7 Gifu 12,090 19 Okayama 5,786
8 Hiroshima 11,172 20 Kagoshima 5,700
9 Tokyo 11,111 21 Nara 5,243
10 Køchi 10,082 22 Toyama 5,200
11 Akita 9,452 23 Fukui 5,136
12 Shizuoka 9,206 24 Yamanashi 5,105
Source: Mansh¨ kaitakushi kankøkai, Mansh¨ kaitakushi, 1966.
Note
Prefectures ranking lower than 24 have been omitted.

emigration to North America came to a halt in the 1920s, they started to

send emigrants to Manchuria as an alternative. Okinawa had similarly
sent many emigrants to North America but ranked forty-first when it came
to Manchuria, possibly because the cold climate there did not appeal to
local farmers.
Ibaraki Prefecture, where Katø Kanji now lived and a center of radical
agrarianism during the depression era, came only thirty-third. Most of
those who did emigrate came from the northern portion of the prefecture,
where dry-field farming prevailed and where agrarianism was particu-
larly popular. But there was little interest either in agrarianism or in
emigration in the southern, rice-producing portion of the prefecture.
That there were unusually extensive tracts of forest on fairly level land
stretching from the western part of the prefecture to the southern,
providing opportunities to bring new land under cultivation at home, no
doubt helps to explain the lack of interest in Manchuria.
To some degree, then, the geographical distribution of emigrants
reflected local economic conditions, but there were other important factors
as well, ranging from personal ties and a local tradition of emigration to
the presence of local leaders promoting emigration. The latter was of
particular importance. It was usually the case that those who mobilized
the poor farmers and landless agricultural workers in their villages into
emigrant groups were the very mainstay farmers and, in some cases, the
village leaders who had previously led local rural revitalization efforts.
 Wartime Japan 185
1111 Indeed, it was central to the whole emigration project that local main-
2111 stays persuade others in their communities to emigrate.
3 In Yamagata Prefecture the following six categories of people were
4 listed as eligible to apply for emigration: (1) those who could command
5111 the respect of others and function in the future as the leaders of emigrant
6 communities; (2) those with useful non-agricultural skills; (3) those
7 with no land at all or insufficient land holdings; (4) those with a firm
8 commitment to simplicity and honesty; (5) those who had engaged in
9 agriculture for many years; and (6) those who were diligent and frugal
1011 (Mori 1999: 162).
1 The first category very clearly meant village mainstays. The ‘useful
2 skills’ in the second category included plasterer, carpenter, blacksmith
3111 and car driver, combined with some farming experience. All the other
4 categories applied primarily to poor farmers of one sort or another, from
5 landless agricultural workers to tenant farmers with tiny holdings.
6 No educational qualifications were imposed. Although applicants up
7 to 30 years of age who had passed the physical examination for con-
8 scription were preferred, anyone up to the age of 40 who was capable of
9 physical labor was eligible. Even if married, applicants had to be willing
20111 to emigrate on their own and leave their families behind for at least one
1 year; not need to send money back to their families; and be able to provide
2 30 yen toward the cost of getting to their destination and 20 to 30 yen
3 for their expenses for a year. Most applicants were the fairly young second
4 and third sons of farm families, who had no obligation to send money
5111 home.
6 Each successful applicant in 1937 was given a grant of 1,000 yen and
7 ten chø of land in Manchuria, consisting of one chø of paddy land, three
8 chø of dry fields and the rest in a portion of communal pasture land. No
9 payments for the land were required for five years, and then the culti-
30111 vator would have ten years to pay the amount due (Tokyo asahi shinbun,
1 May 29, 1937).
2 Table 8.2 shows the socio-economic status of 20 residents who
3 emigrated to Manchuria from Yamato Village in the Shønai district of
4 Yamagata Prefecture in 1941. The largest group, 13 of the 20, were agri-
5 cultural workers either on a daily or annual basis. Four of the 13 also
6 engaged in farming, probably as tenants. There was one carpenter, one
7 factory worker and one rope maker, men who possessed some of the
8 sought-after useful skills. All but one of the emigrants were married, not
9 a few of them having large families with six to nine members. Their
40111 average age was 37.
1 Among those who emigrated from Yamato Village were three men
2111 who were members of the Imperial Farmers’ Corps, two of them farmers
Table 8.2 Emigrants from Yamato Village, 1941

Occupation Family Area land Household Age Imperial Industrial association

size cultivated tax paid Farmers’ (sangyø kumiai)
(tan) (yen) Corps
Savings Loans
(yen) (yen)
1 Agricultural day laborer, farmer 3 2.4 0.24 53 – 30.00 20.00
2 Farmer, rice miller 5 5.0 0.34 36 – – –
3 Agricultural worker (annual) 7 – 1.65 25 – – –
4 Farmer 6 8.5 0.17 36 member 48.21 190.00
5 Agricultural day laborer 8 – 1.65 31 member 30.00 –
6 Agricultural day laborer 7 – 0.18 41 – – –
7 Farmer 8 21.6 0.35 36 member 150.00 1,431.00
8 Agricultural day laborer 7 – – 39 – 60.00 165.00
9 Agricultural day laborer 4 – 15.13(sic) 42 – – –
10 Agricultural day laborer 6 – 0.24 25 – – –
11 Agricultural day laborer, farmer 6 1.8 0.24 42 – 90.00 332.00
12 Farmer, agricultural day laborer 9 7.0 0.55 38 – 60.00 150.00
13 Agricultural day laborer, farmer 6 2.6 0.24 45 – 60.00 170.00
14 Agricultural day laborer 5 – – 36 – 60.00 –
15 Farmer 3 8.4 3.58 33 – 90.00 350.00
16 Agricultural worker (annual) 5 – 0.24 31 – 60.00 230.00
17 Carpenter 6 – 0.11 36 – – –
18 Agricultural day laborer 6 – – 55 – – –
19 Factory worker 1 – 3.58 24 – – –
20 Rope maker 6 – 0.24 36 – – –
Total 114 57.3 28.73 738.27 3,038.00
Average (of entries) 5.7 7.2 1.69 37 67.12 337.56
Source: Sekisetsu chihø nøson keizai chøsajo, Mansh¨ nøgyø imin boson keizai jittai chøsa, 1941.
 Wartime Japan 187
1111 with land holdings (at over two chø and 8.5 tan, respectively) that were
2111 considerably larger than the holdings of others in the group. These were
3 clearly village mainstays, who fulfilled the criteria of ‘commanding the
4 respect of others and functioning in the future as leaders of the emigrant
5111 village.’ Thus, this group of emigrants was stratified into a few mainstay
6 leaders on the one hand, and a larger number of poor farmers and agri-
7 cultural workers on the other. The latter, and the three men with useful
8 non-agricultural skills, were probably the second and third sons of local
9 farm households, who saw emigration to Manchuria as their only chance
1011 to establish themselves as landowning farmers.
1 Let us now turn our attention to one of the local mainstay farmers who
2 played a crucial role in leading a group of emigrants from Yamato in
3111 1943, Togashi Naotarø. Togashi was born in 1902. After graduating from
4 upper elementary school and completing a middle-school correspondence
5 course, he had spent some time in Tokyo. The eldest son in his family,
6 he then returned home to succeed his father as family head. After becom-
7 ing active in the administration of the local youth association (seinendan),
8 at the age of 25 he had attended some of Katø Kanji’s lectures in
9 Kamiyama and was persuaded that the opening up of new farm land at
20111 home and abroad was a means of solving the problems facing the non-
1 inheriting sons of farm families.
2 His own family had been owner-cultivators of two chø of land, but
3 his father had been forced to mortgage the entire holding when a coal
4 mining venture in Karafuto he had borrowed money to invest in had
5111 failed during the depression. Faced with a great burden of debt, Togashi
6 eagerly committed himself to rural revitalization and played an active
7 role in organizing an industrial cooperative in his village. Then, by dint
8 of improvements to his farm management and hard work, he was finally
9 able to repay his creditors and regain title to the family landholding. In
30111 addition, he rented 2.5 chø, thus becoming an owner-tenant cultivating
1 4.5 chø in all.
2 Sometime in the 1930s he had organized the Yamato Village Imperial
3 Farmers’ Corps and become a champion of emigration to Manchuria as
4 a means of solving the problem of rural over-population and the bleak
5 prospects of non-inheriting sons. In 1943 he won over potential emigrants
6 with the promise that each of them would become the owner-cultivator
7 of ten chø of land, obtained the necessary land from the Koreans who
8 were cultivating it with the help of the Manchurian Development
9 Corporation, and set off for Manchuria. In 1945, after the Soviet Union
40111 had entered the war and Japan had surrendered, local Manchurians
1 attacked the settlement Togashi had established, killing 40 villagers. He
2111 tried to lead the remaining emigrants back to Japan, but they were captured
188 Mori Takemaro
by Red Army troops and imprisoned in Siberia for one year and a half
(interview with Togashi Naotarø, 1991).
Back in the late 1930s Togashi wrote the following about the ‘branch
village movement’ he led:

(a) The branch village movement is of fundamental importance to

rural regeneration, but village elders raise all sorts of objections to it.
That’s because they are trapped in conventional ways of thinking and
contented with the status quo. They have no interest in building a new
Japan. I feel that friction between people like them who think only of
themselves and people with new ways of thinking is inevitable. After
years of toil, I finally got our household finances straightened out, and
then I got involved in this movement. Since then I’ve had no time
at all for farming. . . . But then, no one determined to build an ideal
society can expect an easy time of it.
(b) ‘Emigration’ is not the movement of impoverished people to
another place. Rather, it should be seen as a quest for independence,
undertaken by comrades who understand the true importance of agri-
culture and who have awakened to the Japanese spirit. That’s how I
regard emigration by farmers. Those who dismiss agriculture, now
that it has been devastated by the money economy, and who think
that the only work worth having is that of an employee on monthly
salary are mistaken, very mistaken indeed.
(c) Japanese history is actually the history of emigration. Both
the Eastern Expedition by Emperor Jimmu and the conquest of the
Kumaso tribe in Kyushu by Prince Yamato-takeru were products
of a genuine, unceasing effort. It is the same today with the many
soldiers who leave their villages to cheering throngs and waving flags
to attend to the sacred task of driving the Russians out of Asia. . . .
The Høtoku movement founded by the revered Ninomiya [Sontoku]
and the colonization movement championed by Katø-sensei, leader
of the Imperial Farmers’ Corps, share the same essence. . . . Villages
today are filled to overflowing with people, but finally there is a solu-
tion at hand to the wretchedness of residents’ lives and livelihoods.
. . . Aren’t we brave men who don’t worry about whether we live or
die? Wouldn’t we like to lay the foundations for later settlements all
the way to the Urals?
(Togashi 1938: 32–3)

It was in the above terms that one mainstay farmer, Togashi Naotarø,
made the case for emigration to Manchuria. In (a) he emphasized that
the branch village campaign had been opposed by ‘village elders,’ chiefly
 Wartime Japan 189
1111 landlords we can assume, and represented a struggle to break free from
2111 the status quo and create an ideal society. Here we observe that so strong
3 was his ideological commitment that he was even prepared to put his
4 position as a middling farmer in jeopardy by neglecting his own fields.
5111 In (b) he professed his commitment to the central beliefs of agrarianism
6 by means of a critique of the money economy and of urban salaried
7 employees, confirming the importance of agriculture as a way of life and
8 the importance of Japanese spirit. In (c) he made a case for emigration,
9 in the process legitimizing his own actions. By citing examples of mili-
1011 tary expeditions since ancient (even mythological) times, he sought to
1 present contemporary expansion onto the continent as an equally sacred
2 project, in that the creation of a branch village would rescue all of those
3111 who had been impoverished emotionally and economically by the depres-
4 sion. Moreover, the expansion of the Yamato people he envisaged would
5 eventually extend beyond Manchuria to reach as far as the Urals. The
6 three elements of emperor-centered history, rescue of the countryside and
7 emigration were thus combined in his thinking.
8 Although inspired by Katø Kanji, Togashi’s ideas about emigration
9 were also shaped by the dire straits of the countryside in the aftermath
20111 of the depression. Readers today will no doubt be struck by his ethno-
1 centrism and enthusiastic support for the invasion of foreign lands, but
2 it should also be noted that in the rural Japan of the time his ideas were
3 considered revolutionary in that they, like the even grander schemes for
4 a ‘Showa Restoration’ propounded by young military officers in the 1930s,
5111 sought to destroy the status quo. He regarded the acquisition of foreign
6 territory not as an end in itself, but as a means of relieving rural poverty
7 at home.
8 As the example of Togashi demonstrates, the promotion of emigration
9 to Manchuria depended very greatly on the leadership of mainstay farm-
30111 ers and the recruitment efforts of the local Imperial Farmers’ Corps to per-
1 suade second and third sons to sign up for emigration. It appears that, in
2 the Tohoku region, emigration was further encouraged by some lineage
3 groups (døzoku, known locally as maki) and hamlets pressing for volun-
4 teers to emigrate for the greater good of all concerned (Yunoki 1977: 60).
5 The next matter to consider is the response of local landlords to
6 Togashi’s campaign. In Yamato Village, a few large landlords had long
7 dominated village affairs, and they proved themselves decidedly cool to
8 both rural revitalization and emigration to Manchuria. In fact, their stance
9 toward the latter was hostile, leading Togashi to conclude that the only
40111 way forward against the opposition of ‘village elders’ who defended the
1 status quo was to seek the radical reform of village politics. Large land-
2111 lords in the village objected to emigration primarily because fewer tenant
Table 8.3 Views on the necessity of emigration to Manchuria, Ibaraki Prefecture, as surveyed in September 1936 (%)

Not Very Necessary Fairly Somewhat Necessary Necessary Logically

necessary necessary necessary necessary in the in view necessary
future of national
policy
Village mayors 40 11 12 7 14 7 3 6
Agricultural association heads 59 7 29 7 15 7 4
Industrial association heads 35 16 19 9 2 7 2
Elementary school principals 31 20 11 3 12 11 3 1
Agricultural technicians 51 19 16 3 16
Youth school teachers 23 28 21 5 14 7 5 1
Reservists’ association heads 41 20 14 1 4 7 3 2
Youth group leaders 30 15 17 5 7 9 6
Girls’ youth group leaders 35 6 7 7 11

Overall response rate 37 16 19 5 10 7 3 3

Source: Nøson køsei kyøkai, Tochi jinkø chøsei taisaku ni kansuru Ibaraki 4 gun nøson chøsa, 1937.
 Wartime Japan 191
1111 farmers would reduce demand for their land, leading first to a decline
2111 in the rents they could charge and eventually to a decline in the value
3 of their holdings. Some smaller cultivating landlords also objected to
4 emigration on the grounds that it would reduce the plentiful supply
5111 of local labor, forcing them to pay higher wages to those they employed
6 to work their fields.
7 The stance of the established local elite in Yamato does not appear to
8 have been at all atypical. Consider the results shown in Table 8.3 of a
9 survey conducted in villages in four districts of Ibaraki Prefecture in
1011 September 1936, in which residents who held various administrative posts
1 within their communities were asked their views on emigration to
2 Manchuria. Even though this survey took place at a time when emigra-
3111 tion was official national policy and explicit opposition to that policy
4 was difficult, more than 37 percent of those polled said they saw ‘no
5 need’ for such emigration. Moreover, the largest groups among those
6 so responding were heads of local branches of the Imperial Agricultural
7 Association (59 percent), agricultural technicians (51 percent), heads of
8 local branches of the Military Reservists’ Association (41 percent) and
9 village mayors (40 percent). As most leadership posts in branches of the
20111 Imperial Agricultural Association were occupied by landlords at this time
1 and as most village mayors were landlords, it is apparent that landlords
2 tended not to favor emigration.
3 Those expressing views in favor of emigration may be divided into
4 two groups, 40 percent expressing what can be described as positive
5111 endorsement (either ‘very necessary,’ ‘necessary’ or ‘fairly necessary’)
6 and 23 percent who might best be described as marginally or passively
7 in favor (10 percent ‘somewhat necessary’; 7 percent ‘necessary in the
8 future’; 3 percent ‘necessary in view of national policy’; and 3 percent
9 ‘logically necessary.’) The highest percentages recorded among those who
30111 regarded emigration as ‘very necessary’ were teachers in youth schools
1 (at 28 percent), principals of primary schools (at 20 percent) and leaders
2 of local military reservists branches (also at 20 percent). That suggests
3 that it was primarily the educators within villages who promoted emigra-
4 tion, along with at least some with close ties to the military.
5 Among the reasons cited in the same report concerning why farmers
6 in general were opposed to emigration were uncertainty about the condi-
7 tions on offer, fear of Manchuria itself, the availability of land for
8 reclamation within Japan, the peace and stability of their own villages,
9 love for the homeland, parental objections, and opportunities to find work
40111 in Japanese cities (Nøson køsei kyøkai 1937).
1 To sum up, it is clear that mainstay farmers with strong ideological
2111 convictions played a crucial role in mobilizing a fairly modest number
192 Mori Takemaro
of farmers to emigrate to Manchuria. It was very definitely not a program
led by landlords as a means of defusing tension between themselves and
their tenants, as some have argued (for example, Asada 1976), nor was
it a venture to which poor farmers flocked in droves, eager to get their
hands on ten chø of land, as others have argued (Takahashi 1997). On
the contrary, poor farmers needed considerable persuasion to overcome
their reluctance to sign on as emigrants.
Moreover, from the start of the Sino–Japanese War in 1937 and the
boom in war-related industries that it triggered, there were plenty of
opportunities for non-agricultural employment again, and poor farmers
had the more attractive option of migrating to Japanese cities. That Nagano
Prefecture continued to provide emigrants in significant numbers there-
after was in part because of the strength of agrarian thought within the
prefecture and the activism of local mainstay farmers, and in part because
of the continued economic distress caused by the collapse of sericulture
in mountainous districts where arable land, and hence alternatives to seri-
culture, was scarce. Even then, it took the efforts of mainstay farmers
and the urgings of such village leaders as elementary school teachers,
youth school teachers and heads of military reservist branches to channel

Plate 8.1 Settlers from Yamagata Prefecture in Manchuria, 1943. Courtesy of

Togashi Eiji.
 Wartime Japan 193
1111 the desire of poor farmers for more land into a decision to emigrate to
2111 Manchuria.
3 Roughly comparable circumstances prevailed in Yamagata Prefecture.
4 On the one hand, many of the mainstay farmers in that prefecture, whether
5111 owner-cultivators or owner-tenants, saw the emigration of their poorer
6 neighbors as a source of additional land for themselves, an important
7 consideration in a region where the harsh winter climate permitted only
8 one crop of rice per year, and actively supported the ‘branch village’
9 movement to achieve that outcome. On the other hand, there were far
1011 fewer factories of any sort in the prefecture or anywhere along the Japan
1 Sea side of the country, whether war-related or not, than was the case
2 on the other side of the country, facing the Pacific, and so there were
3111 relatively few opportunities for poor farmers and non-inheriting sons to
4 find non-agricultural employment. As a result, the over-population of
5 villages remained a problem, and campaigners such as Togashi Naotarø
6 remained able to gain recruits for emigration.
7
8
Emigration to Korea
9
20111 To shed further light on the relationship between rural society and emigra-
1 tion to Manchuria, I would like to make some comparisons with emi-
2 gration to Korea. As noted previously, Korea had been the most popular
3 destination for Japanese emigrants in the early decades of the century,
4 especially after its ‘absorption’ into the Japanese empire in 1910. From
5111 then and throughout the 1920s, the Oriental Development Company
6 (Tøyø takushoku kaisha) played an active role in promoting emigration
7 (Matsunaga 2000: 31–57). For the purpose of comparison with Manchuria,
8 however, I will confine my attention to emigration to Korea during the
9 1930s.
30111 As an example, I will consider the efforts of Matsuoka Toshizo, a Diet
1 Member from Yamagata Prefecture, to establish forestry operations in
2 Korea. Matsuoka, who belonged to the Seiy¨kai Party, represented the
3 Murayama district and had played at active role in promoting rural relief
4 projects there and in the Mogami district in the early years of the depres-
5 sion. From 1934 on, he began supporting the forging of closer transporta-
6 tion links between Japan and Korea – the so-called project to turn the Sea
7 of Japan into a Japanese lake – and advocating the promotion of forestry
8 in northern Korea, which would provide employment opportunities for
9 emigrants from Yamagata and elsewhere in the Tohoku.
40111 The project to turn the Sea of Japan into a Japanese lake involved
1 developing new ports at Rajin and Unggi and the creation of a free-trade
2111 zone at the mouth of the Tumen River near the border between Korea
194 Mori Takemaro
and Manchuria as a means of promoting the development of northern
Korea (Yoshii 2000: 260–79). It was part of the plan for the indus-
trialization of Korea announced by the Japanese governor-general of the
colony, Ugaki Kazushige, in the early 1930s (Hori 1995: 191–265), which
brought about a marked change in Japanese emigration thereafter. Instead
of farmers, emigrants who would contribute to Korea’s industrialization
were now sought.
Matsuoka’s forestry project in northern Korea was a response to this
new departure, aiming at the exploitation of 11,000 chø of state-owned
forests along the upper reaches of the Tumen River to provide timber for
the construction of factories and other industrial facilities elsewhere in
the colony. He explained his objectives in an advertisement that appeared
on January 6, 1937 in the Yamagata edition of the Tokyo asahi shinbun,
with the headline ‘All travel expenses paid. Call for volunteers to survey
conditions in northern Korea.’ The text read:

Every sensible person knows that new enterprises should be devel-

oped more rapidly in northern Korea than in northern Manchuria.
Northern Korea is situated at the very door of the whole northern
Manchuria region, which stretches from Changchun to the Amur
River at the border. Northern Korea, therefore, is a strategic point
of ultimate importance. People from the Tohoku should most seri-
ously concern themselves with northern Korea. It is more than obvious
that, in every possible respect, northern Korea as a strategic point is
more important than any other place. With Port Rajin and Port
Chongin, is not northern Korea the most promising place for ambi-
tious youths?
Residents of Yamagata Prefecture tend to be traditional. . . . They
find it difficult even in these troubled times to adjust to the new
circumstances that prevail. High birth rates have forced farm fami-
lies to divide up their holdings into smaller and smaller parcels, and
as a result many farmers are now destitute. Like it or not, it is
absolutely certain that the day will come when everyone, not just
tenant farmers but landlords and wealthy owner-cultivators too, will
face ruin.
In contrast to the bleak situation here, northern Korea is like a blank
sheet of paper. With a blank sheet, one can allow oneself to enjoy
drawing whatever one wants. And one will be properly rewarded for
one’s efforts. Are you contented with the status quo, or do you want
the chance of a better life by moving to the new frontier?
I have devised this inspection tour as a test of the determination
of the residents of Yamagata Prefecture. I am confident that right-
 Wartime Japan 195
1111 minded people will come forward, and that is why I have placed this
2111 advertisement.
3
4 The advertisement alluded to the problems of overpopulation and poverty
5111 that had afflicted the Tohoku region. It then contrasted that problem-
6 ridden region with a supposedly problem-free northern Korea, which was
7 projected as an attractive ‘new frontier’ where young people would be
8 able to realize their legitimate aspirations. We can see here an attempt
9 to link the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo with the industri-
1011 alization of Korea, and to encourage Japanese emigration to northern
1 Korea.
2 It was Kazama Køemon, a large landlord owning 500 chø in the Shonai
3111 region of Yamagata, who provided finance for Matsuoka’s project in
4 northern Korea (Shibuya, Mori, Hasebe 2000: 300–14), and the combined
5 outcome of his funding and Matsuoka’s organizational efforts was the
6 establishment of the Matsuoka Forestry Works (Matsuoka ringyø jimusho)
7 on 11,000 chø of state-owned forest land along the upper reaches of the
8 Tumen River. The inspection/emigration promotion tour advertised above
9 took place in April 1937, visiting the Matsuoka works and some other
20111 sites in northern Korea. The 40 tour members recruited from Yamagata
1 consisted of 30 farmers, seven shopkeepers, two teachers and one
2 carpenter, all young men in their twenties who had met the selection
3 criteria set out in the advertisement: ‘It is essential that applicants come
4 from families of moderate means or less, be literate, be sound in mind
5111 and body and robust in spirit. A reference [of good character] from the
6 village mayor or police officer would be very useful’ as would be ‘enthusi-
7 astic commitment to the transformation of the people of northern Korea
8 into loyal subjects of the Emperor.’
9 The tour group landed in Port Chongin on April 5, 1937 and, after
30111 inspecting Port Rajin, Port Unggi and the large coal-mine district of Aoji,
1 it arrived at the headquarters of the Matsuoka Forestry Works on the 8th.
2 To commemorate their visit to Korea and the ‘union of the peoples of
3 Japan and Korea,’ tour members then joined with the 300 Korean workers
4 at the works for two weeks of tree planting. Finally, the group crossed
5 the Tumen River and visited a number of sites in Manchuria, including
6 a sheep breeding farm operated by the Oriental Development Company,
7 before returning to Japan in early May.
8 Only 15 of the original 40 tour members returned to Japan, however;
9 25 of them stayed on in northern Korea (or in two cases, Manchuria) as
40111 emigrants. As shown in Table 8.4, seven of them took jobs with the
1 Matsuoka Forestry Works, but the majority found employment elsewhere,
2111 with those entering non-agricultural work of one sort or another far
196 Mori Takemaro
Table 8.4 Employment found by the 25 tour members who
became emigrants

Position/occupation Number
Matsuoka Forestry Works 7
Farming 3
Business 4
Shop worker 3
South Manchurian Railway employee 2
Mitsubishi Corporation employee 2
Office worker in a fishermen’s association 2
Office worker in a mining company 1
Chøsen Nichi Nichi newspaper 1
Total 25
Source: ‘Hokusen mitodokedan zaisensha genzaibo,’ in Chøsen jigyø
shokan tsuzuri (June 1936–December 1938). Kazama-ke monjo.

outnumbering those taking up farming. They may have come from fami-
lies of ‘moderate means or less’ and no doubt they were the second or
third sons in those families, but as the requirement of literacy and char-
acter references from authority figures suggests, they were probably
from somewhat more affluent backgrounds than emigrants to Manchuria.
Even though many of them came from farm families, moreover, most
opted for non-agricultural employment. Given the relative stability of
Korea under Japanese rule and the on-going program of industrial devel-
opment in the north, there appears to have been ample such employment
available.
A further contrast with Manchuria concerns the role of landlords. As
the sponsorship of Matsuoka’s venture by Kazama illustrates, wealthy
landlords in wartime Japan were gradually shifting away from invest-
ment in arable land to investments in forests at home and abroad, and
they were keen to take advantage of the economic opportunities that
forestry development in Korea offered. Rather than opposing emigration,
as was the case with Manchuria, they actively supported it.
To sum up, by the mid-1930s emigration to Korea had evolved from
the state-sponsored programs of the early decades of Japanese colonial
rule there to something akin to the voluntary ‘economic migration’ of
Japanese to North America that had taken place until the 1920s and the
‘economic migration’ that continued to Central and South America there-
after. Of course, in the Korean case that fairly voluntary migration took
place within the context of firm colonial rule by the Japanese military,
but the military itself was not directly involved (Lee 1999: 156–82).
 Wartime Japan 197
1111 Emigration to Manchuria was markedly different. It was focused on
2111 agriculture, poor farmers were its major target, and at every step it was
3 controlled by the Japanese military. It was also conceived on a truly grand
4 scale, as a ‘national project’ requiring the movement of one million farm
5111 households, almost one-fifth of all the farm households in Japan, from
6 their home islands to that part of northeast Asia. As we have seen, recruit-
7 ment proved difficult and by the time of Japan’s surrender on August 15,
8 1945 only a total of 320,000 individuals had emigrated. Those who
9 remained in Manchuria at that time would pay a heavy price indeed for
1011 having seized the chance of owning 10 chø of land. The troops of the
1 Kwantung Army rapidly retreated when the Soviet Red Army crossed
2 the Manchurian border on August 9, leaving the settlers behind and subject
3111 to reprisal attacks by the local population. Roughly one-third of them
4 lost their lives. Many survivors, Togashi Naotarø among them, were
5 captured and interned for a time in Siberia, and it would not be until after
6 the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between Japan and the
7 People’s Republic of China in the early 1970s that the children of Japanese
8 emigrants who had been separated from their parents in the confusion of
9 retreat and revenge could be repatriated to Japan. In every respect that
20111 one can think of, Japan’s wartime project to promote emigration to
1 Manchuria was a total failure.
2
3
References
4
5111 Asada Kyøji. 1976. ‘Mansh¨ nøgyø imin seisaku no ritsuan katei.’ In Nihon
6 teikokushugika no Mansh¨ imin, ed. Mansh¨ iminshi kenky¨kai. Tokyo:
7 Ry¨keishosha.
Hori Kazuo. 1995. Chøsen køgyøka no shiteki bunseki. Tokyo: Y¨hikaku.
8
Ide Magoroku, 1986. Owarinaki tabi. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
9 Lee Junko. 1999. ‘Shokuminchi køgyøka ron to Ugaki Issei søtø no seisaku.’ In
30111 Ugaki Issei to sono jidai, ed. Hori Makoto. Tokyo: Shinhyøron.
1 Matsunaga Tatsushi. 2000. ‘Tøyø takushoku kaisha no imin jigyø.’ In Kokusaku-
2 gaisha Tøtaku no kenky¨, ed. Kawai Kazuo et al. Tokyo: Fuji shuppan.
3 Mori Takemaro. 1999. Senji Nihon nøson shakai no kenky¨. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
4 shuppankai.
5 Nøson køsei kyøkai. 1937. Tochi jinkø chøsei taisaku ni kansuru Ibaraki 4 gun
6 chøsa. Tokyo: Nøson køsei kyøkai.
Shibuya Ry¨ichi, Mori Takemaro and Hasebe Hiroshi. 2000. Shihonshugi no hatten
7
to chihø zaibatsu. Tokyo: Gendai shiryø shuppan.
8 Takahashi Yasutaka. 1997. Shøwa sensenki no nøson to Mansh¨ imin. Tokyo:
9 Yoshikawa købunkan.
40111 Togashi Naotarø. 1938. ‘Bunson undø no senjin o abite,’ Hirake Manmø, 2(11).
1 Yamada Shøji. 1978. Kindai minsh¨ no kiroku 6 – Mansh¨ imin. Tokyo: Shin-
2111 jinbutsu øraisha.
198 Mori Takemaro
Yoshii Ken’ichi. 2000. Kan-Nihonkai chiiki shakai: Manmø, Kantø, Ura Nihon.
Tokyo: Aoki shoten.
Yunoki Shun’ichi. 1977. ‘Mansh¨ nøgyø imin seisaku to Shønai gata imin,’ Shakai
keizai shigaku, Nos. 42–5.
1111
2111 9 Part-time farming and the
3 structure of agriculture in
4
5111 postwar Japan
6
7 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
Introduction
5 In a recent article, Penelope Francks (2000) analyzed postwar agricul-
6 tural policy in Japan, Korea and Taiwan in order to determine whether
7 an East Asian model of agricultural development can be said to exist and
8 to have played a broadly similar role in industrial development in those
9 countries. By means of a comparative analysis of the structures of agri-
20111 culture and exploration of how each national government has interacted
1 with its own agricultural sector, Francks concluded that there are three
2 basic similarities in the evolution of postwar agriculture across these
3 countries. These are: (1) the fundamental role of rice cultivation in the
4 structure of agricultural production and food consumption; (2) an active
5111 ‘developmental state’ which intervened in the farm sector, with the assist-
6 ance of agricultural cooperative organizations, to support farm incomes
7 and protect family farm households; and (3) the spread of pluriactivity,
8 or part-time farming, to a majority of farm households.
9 Francks’ analysis helps us recognize that Japan is not a singular case
30111 of agricultural change. Although Japanese agricultural development may
1 appear to have very little in common with that of the United States or
2 Europe, it would be a mistake to conclude that the Japanese case is unique
3 and does not share similarities with other East Asian societies, or even
4 some Occidental ones. A long history of riziculture, mountainous land-
5 scapes, a tradition of strong central governments, and a Confucian heritage
6 are a few of the conditions that are shared by Japan, Korea and Taiwan
7 and that have affected parallel changes in agriculture. In addition, Japan’s
8 agricultural system, like those in other so-called ‘developed’ societies,
9 has been under pressure to become more economically efficient within
40111 the context of globalization. Japan shares with Europe the facts of a
1 peasant agrarian history, a prevalence of small-scale agricultural opera-
2111 tions, and strong state involvement in agriculture. Thus, while there are
200 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
aspects of Japanese agricultural and rural life that are unique, the condi-
tions there are not exceptional.
Francks’ work highlights the role of national state actors in agricul-
tural development. Of particular emphasis is how, in each East Asian
case, the ‘state’ was a merging of public and private sector actors. The
key private institution that has worked with the government bureaucracy
in all three settings to initiate and implement farm income support poli-
cies has been the producer cooperative. Although there have been
differences in the policies enacted and how the relationships between the
government and the cooperatives have worked, Francks argues that this
strong public–private sector coordination is reflective of a state-centered
form of development that has been successful in many parts of Asia.
Finally, Francks underscores how the spread of part-time farming has
become a central element in the evolution of postwar agriculture in that
part of the world:

Thus the pluriactive farm household represents a key link in the model
[of agriculture’s role in industrialization in East Asia], acting as the
vehicle through which rural incomes could be sustained while labour
and other resources were transferred to the industrial sector, and as
the basic unit in a policy network which both exploited and supported
this form of agricultural organization.
(Francks 2000: 49)

This model crystallized during the first two decades of postwar Japanese
history, which was a period of rapid and remarkable transformations.
While the majority of Japanese rural households in the late 1940s were
farm households that earned most or all of their income from agricul-
tural activities, by the latter half of the 1960s most rural households were
obtaining more than half of their income off-farm. As Francks notes, this
rapid growth of part-time farming came about in part because of changes
in the agricultural sector as well as the larger economy. Pluriactivity was
the strategy through which farm households could adapt to industrial-
ization while simultaneously maintaining their links to agriculture and
community. Thus, an analysis of part-time farming is useful for under-
standing the socio-economic forces affecting postwar rural Japan, and for
understanding how farm households accommodated themselves to these
changes.
The goal of this chapter is to provide such an analysis. I use Francks’
recognition of the significance of the spread of part-time farming in East
Asia as a point of departure for describing the evolution of the Japanese
structure of agriculture in the decades after the Second World War. It is
 Part-time farming 201
1111 my assertion that this growth in part-time farming, particularly of the
2111 type in which over half of household income is from non-agricultural
3 sources, occurred because it was the most feasible option for Japanese
4 farm households to use to adapt to rapid social, political and eco-
5111 nomic change. The political-economic context of that period included the
6 occupation of Japan by the United States military, food shortages, rapid
7 domestic economic growth, accelerated agricultural mechanization,
8 changing food and agricultural policies, and the growing integration of
9 Japan into a global political–economy. However, I also contend that the
1011 spread of a part-time farming strategy cannot be fully appreciated without
1 recognizing some of the continuities that existed between pre- and postwar
2 rural Japan. The importance of rice in Japanese culture, farming as a busi-
3111 ness (rather than a peasant activity), the active role of the Japanese
4 government in rural and agricultural policy, and familiarity with part-
5 time farming were well established elements of the socio-economic
6 environment in prewar rural Japan. Postwar reconstruction took place
7 upon this foundation. Thus, I argue that the changes that took place in
8 postwar rural Japan reflected historical continuities as well as adaptation
9 to new postwar realities.
20111
1
Historical continuities
2
3 While many changes took place in Japan during and immediately
4 following the Second World War, it is incorrect to assume that the war
5111 created a total rupture with the social, political and economic realities of
6 the prewar era. In many ways Japanese agricultural and rural develop-
7 ment exhibited a consistent trajectory throughout the twentieth century.
8 Although pluriactivity became so widespread in the decades following
9 the war that observers began to think of it as a defining feature of postwar
30111 Japanese agriculture, part-time farming was by no means unknown in
1 prewar Japan. Indeed, it existed in nineteenth-century Japan (Kada 1982:
2 368), as it did in nineteenth-century England (Hill 1984). And, as Økado
3 demonstrates earlier in this volume, women played a key role in prewar
4 Japanese agriculture as well, as women have done throughout history in
5 agricultural systems around the world. The idea that farm household
6 members would work at various agricultural and non-agricultural tasks
7 as part of a shared income-generating strategy was an established way
8 of life in rural Japan long before the Second World War.
9 Another significant constant of twentieth-century Japanese agriculture
40111 was the central role of rice. While there is a wide variety of agricultural
1 commodities that can be grown in Japan, rice was, and continues to be,
2111 the dominant agricultural commodity. Rice production has a long history
202 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
in Japan, as well as other East Asian cultures (King 1911: 6–8). During
the Tokugawa era, the amount of land devoted to rice production grew
from an estimated 1.5 million hectares in the seventeenth century to
2.97 million hectares by the eighteenth century (Amatatsu 1959: 6). This
is roughly the same area that was devoted to rice cultivation in Japan
during the 1980s (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry 1999)! In addi-
tion, during the twentieth century, the area devoted to rice production
generally has exceeded the area devoted to the production of all other
agricultural commodities combined. Given that context, it is not surprising
that rice production and rice policies continued to be pivotal to postwar
agriculture.
Certainly, the production and consumption of rice evolved during the
twentieth century. Tremendous technological innovations in rice pro-
duction, both biological and mechanical, contributed to a steady increase
in yields for most of the century (Ogura 1980: chapter 3). In addition,
the culture of rice consumption also changed, particularly in the 1960s
and 1970s, when the percentage of calories in the national diet derived
from rice began to decline: in 1960, nearly half of all calories consumed
in Japan were from rice, but by 1990 that ratio had declined to approx-
imately 25 percent (Nørin Tøkei Kyøkai 1998). However, despite these
changes, rice cultivation continues to be a defining feature of rural Japan.
Indeed, as foreign pressure to liberalize rice trade has increased, some
Japanese have begun to argue that rice paddies are an indispensable
element of Japanese ecology, in part because they help retain water in
the countryside that would otherwise contribute to flooding during the
rainy season (Tashiro 1992: 43). Rice also is said to be the most impor-
tant agricultural commodity produced in Japan from economic, political,
symbolic and religious perspectives (Francks 2000: 46).
The prominence of rice in the political economy of twentieth-century
Japan is reflected in the centrality of rice in Japanese food policy. Ongoing
political demands from consumers for access to affordable rice in the
prewar era, including actions like the Rice Riots that began in Toyama
Prefecture in 1918, compelled the government to be actively involved
in securing rice supplies, including rice imported from the colonies, and
stabilizing consumer rice prices. A key legislative act was the adoption
of the Rice Law of 1921 (Matsumoto 1959: 15), which provided a
foundation for rice policy into the postwar era. Spurred on by rice short-
ages in the early postwar years, which were partly made up by imports
from the United States (Jussaume 1991a: 94), the Japanese government
strengthened the system by which it purchased rice directly from farmers
and then sold that rice to consumers at reduced prices. During the 1950s
and 1960s, the announcement of the official producer and consumer prices
 Part-time farming 203
1111 for rice was eagerly awaited throughout Japan, such that ‘The price of
2111 rice may be thought of as representing politics itself in Japan’ (Hemmi
3 1982: 235).
4 It is widely believed that these subsidized producer prices for rice were
5111 crucial in the spread of part-time farming in the postwar years, as they
6 enabled farmers with small landholdings to combine rice cultivation with
7 the off-farm employment of some, even most, family members. Due to
8 economies of scale associated with the adoption of improved production
9 technologies, large-scale rice farming is more economically efficient
1011 in Japan than small-scale farming. Yamaji and Ito (1993: 357–8) have
1 presented evidence that the per hectare cost of producing rice on a farm
2 greater than five hectares is nearly 40 percent less than on a 0.3 hectare
3111 farm. However, because the price of rice has been kept at a high level
4 (Egaitsu 1982: 149), even small-scale farmers have been able to generate
5 a net positive income from producing rice. While returns per hectare or
6 per hour of labor are lower for small-scale farms, any net positive income
7 fits within a household strategy of maximizing income from diverse
8 sources, retaining access to land, and providing work opportunities for
9 household members who do not work off-farm, such as the elderly.
20111 The consistent historical pattern in the twentieth century of active
1 Japanese government involvement in ensuring rice availability and afford-
2 ability is mirrored throughout the broader arena of agricultural policy.
3 While Japanese agricultural policy underwent a variety of changes during
4 that century, particularly with the passage of the Basic Agricultural Law
5111 in 1961, for most of the time Japanese governments placed a priority, at
6 least officially, on rural revitalization and improving the farm economy.
7 One example of this can be found in various government projects to
8 support land reclamation. According to Sasaki (1959: 21), 116,000 hec-
9 tares of land were reclaimed in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s as a result
30111 of subsidies provided by the Land Development Furtherance Law of 1919.
1 This is a relatively small area in comparison to the total area of rice
2 paddy land under cultivation in Japan (less than 4 percent). But consid-
3 ering ecological limitations, government attempts to expand the area under
4 rice cultivation by whatever means possible is a reflection of the impor-
5 tance placed by the government in expanding rice production.
6 Although this law was abolished in 1940, it was replaced by the Land
7 Improvement Law of 1949, which differed from its predecessor primarily
8 in scope and context. The goals of the two laws were similar, and reflected
9 continuing government efforts to maximize agricultural production as
40111 well as create economic opportunities for farm households. The consist-
1 ency of agricultural policies, including rice policies, throughout the
2111 twentieth century demonstrates that the strong role of the state in Japanese
204 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
agriculture and rural areas was neither caused, nor seriously diminished,
by events related to the Second World War.
While one purpose of Japanese agricultural policies may have been to
improve the lives of rural inhabitants, another very important objective
was to promote the interests of the state. The latter included the expan-
sion of agricultural output to provide food for the nation and generate
capital for industrial development. This meant that it was important to
stress the production of agricultural commodities, i.e. crops that would
be sold. The push, particularly after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5,
to have Japanese farmers grow commodities and think of agriculture as
a ‘business’ is one of the main points in Tsutsui’s chapter earlier in this
volume. The notion that Japanese agriculture and rural life were subject
to increasing commodification throughout the twentieth century was also
a central theme of Fukutake’s work (1972, 1980). This means that the
pluriactive strategies of Japanese farm households, throughout the century,
were part of a farming, rather than a peasant, strategy. In other words,
the Second World War did not have the effect of transforming rural
Japanese households from peasants to farmers. That change had taken
place decades earlier.
One institution that played a crucial role throughout this period in
implementing government policies designed to promote the moderniza-
tion of agriculture was the producer cooperative. In her recent article,
Francks (2000: 47) points out that a strong association of agricultural
cooperatives working cooperatively with the national government has
been a key to agricultural development in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
In Japan, the history of the agricultural cooperative movement is approx-
imately 100 years old. In the early years, Japanese agricultural coopera-
tives ‘were imbued with something like the “Rochdale spirit”’ (Dore
1959: 278), as appears to have been the case with early consumer coop-
eratives as well. During the prewar period, the Japanese government began
to form stronger ties with agricultural cooperatives, in part to ensure
government control over food supplies. Those ties were solidified after
the war, with government payments to farmers for the rice they grew
being made through the producer cooperatives, and with cooperatives
functioning as a mechanism for providing credit to farmers (Kato 1969:
345). Nonetheless, it should be noted that the seeds of the model of
cooperative–government cooperation in promoting state policies were
planted in the prewar era.
While many significant changes did take place in rural Japan after the
war, including the rapid expansion of part-time farming, a trajectory of
modern agricultural development was already in place. Prewar Japanese
agriculture was characterized by a high degree of commercialization, and
 Part-time farming 205
1111 Table 9.1 Pluriactivity in prewar Japanese farm households
2111
Agricultural Non-agricultural Total
3 income (yen) income (yen) income (yen)
4
5111 1921 owners 1,138 242 1,381
6 (82.4%) (17.6%) (100%)
7 1921 tenants 597 168 765
8 (78.1%) (21.9%) (100%)
9 1934–36 owners 593 211 804
1011 (73.8%) (26.2%) (100%)
1 1934–36 tenants 361 170 531
2 (68.0%) (32.0%) (100%)
3111 Sources: Ogura Takekasu, Can Japanese Agriculture Survive? (Tokyo: Agricultural Policy
4 Research Center, 1980); Hayashi Y¨ichi, ‘Dokusen dantai e no ikø,’ in Teruoka Sh¨zø, ed.,
5 Nihon nøgyø 100 nen no ayumi (Tokyo: Y¨hikaku, 1996), pp. 97–142.
6
7
8 the active role of the Japanese state in promoting rural development was
9 well established. Before and after the war, the Japanese state had a policy
20111 goal of maximizing agricultural commodity production to promote rural
1 development and maintain food supplies. Finally, pluriactivity was a well-
2 established way of life in prewar rural Japan for many farm households,
3 as shown in Table 9.1. In other words, Japanese farm household members
4 before the war were well acquainted with the role of the state, and the
5111 market, in structuring their daily lives. They also were familiar with using
6 a pluriactive strategy, which included all members of the household
7 working at a variety of income-generating activities, for navigating their
8 lives in the social, economic and political world that surrounded them.
9 This is the foundation upon which the postwar expansion of part-time
30111 farming was constructed.
1
2
Postwar changes in Japanese agriculture
3
4 Although part-time farming in the context of commercialized agriculture
5 was well established in Japan before the Second World War, major trans-
6 formations did take place after the war that contributed to its adoption
7 by an increasing percentage of farm households. Some of these changes
8 were related to the fact that Japan lost the war. While government bureau-
9 cracies remained largely intact, and the direction of government policies
40111 often remained consistent, there was also a great deal of political instabil-
1 ity. The United States government, by virtue of its occupation of Japan,
2111 proposed numerous policy initiatives, some of which were embraced by
206 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
local reformers. The thrust of these programs was to promote the economic
and political reconstruction of Japan.
Perhaps the most important governmental act taken during the occupa-
tion affecting Japanese agriculture and rural life, and one that is sometimes
under-emphasized by contemporary observers, was the Japanese land
reform. This ‘bourgeois’ land reform (Tuma 1965: 140) reinforced the
ideology of household land ownership and sought to end the extraction
of wealth from tenant farmers via land rents. In essence, the land reform
set restrictions on the amount of land that any farmer could own and that
any resident landlord could rent out to tenants. All land in excess of these
limits, as well as all tenanted land owned by absentee landlords, was sold
to the government for a fixed price, and rents on remaining tenancy
contracts were reduced and made payable in cash. All land purchased by
the government was sold to the household that had tenanted that land at
the price the government had paid for it, with the new owner allowed
to pay for the purchase over a 30-year period at a 3.2 percent interest
rate (Ogura 1980: 416).
At the time of its completion, the land reform was considered to be
an overwhelming success. Whereas over half of all rice land and over a
third of upland (or dry) fields were tenanted in 1941, by 1950 only a
tenth of all land was still being tenanted (see Table 9.2). More signifi-
cantly, the number of landless tenant households decreased by more than
one million, or about 20 percent of all farm households in Japan.
Significantly, the scale of farming operations and the number of farm
households did not change drastically. What the land reform accomplished
was to give ownership title to lands that were being farmed by tenant
households. The land reform did not promote rationalization or redistri-
bution of farm lands. Farm households remained on the land and in
villages, which reinforced the ties they had with their communities.
The purpose of the land reform in Japan was the same as that of other
land reforms that were supported by the United States government in
South Korea and Taiwan (Deyo 1987: 1970), as well as other reforms
sponsored by the United States government in occupied Japan. The goal
was to promote economic and political stability by giving as many house-
holds as possible an ownership stake in the economic and political status
quo. Some observers at the time believed that one consequence of the
land reform was a broadening of support for conservatism in rural areas
and an undermining of the attractiveness of ‘leftist’ political parties in
postwar rural Japan (Beardsley et al. 1959: 419–21; Dore 1959: 407–12;
Ogura 1980: 431). This finding has been challenged by Nishida, who
argues that those rural regions of Japan that were progressive before the
war remained progressive, at least until the early 1970s (Nishida 1994:
 Part-time farming 207
1111 Table 9.2 Effects of the Japanese land reform (in chø of land and number of
2111 households)
3
1941 1947 1950
4
5111 Owner-cultivated rice 1,489,000 1,594,000 2,592,000
6 paddies (46.9%) (55.9%) (88.9%)
7 Tenant-cultivated rice 1,686,000 1,256,000 319,000
8 paddies (53.1%) (44.1%) (10.9%)
9 Owner-cultivated dry 1,689,000 1,437,000 2,084,000
1011 fields (62.7%) (66.5%) (91.2%)
1 Tenant-cultivated dry 1,003,000 725,000 195,000
fields (37.2%) (33.5%) (8.5%)
2
3111 Owner-cultivators 1,711,000 2,154,000 3,822,000
(31.2%) (36.5%) (61.8%)
4
Owner/tenants 2,239,000 2,180,000 2,002,000
5 (40.7%) (36.9%) (32.5%)
6
Tenants 1,524,000 1,574,000 312,000
7 (27.7%) (26.6%) (5.0%)
8
9 Source: Ronald P. Dore, Land Reform in Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1959),
pp. 175–6 (tables 8 and 9).
20111
Note
1 1 chø = 2.45 acres = .992 hectares
2
3
4 37–8), by which time part-time farming had spread and the role of farming
5111 in rural life had become less prominent. The transformation of rural areas
6 into a solid constituency for conservative parties may have been over-
7 estimated. However, the strengthening of the agricultural cooperative
8 system, government policies for supporting the price producers received
9 for rice, and the land reform all helped create a foundation for steady
30111 farm household income growth that began in the middle 1950s.
1 Another important change that contributed to the modernization of
2 Japanese agriculture, as well as the spread of part-time farming, was
3 its mechanization. As noted previously, Japanese agriculture had begun
4 the process of commercialization decades earlier. Mechanization was part
5 of this process, as Francks’ study of the innovation of electrical irriga-
6 tion pumps on the Saga Plain illustrated (Francks 1983). Nonetheless, as
7 Hayami and Ruttan (1971) pointed out in their comparative analysis of
8 agricultural development in the United States and Japan, prewar Japanese
9 agriculture was characterized primarily by growth due to the introduc-
40111 tion of yield-enhancing biotechnologies and the intensive use of labor.
1 For example, rice yields were improved through the development of new
2111 varieties, as well as increased use of fertilizers and more intensive farming
208 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
practices. In the United States, on the other hand, prewar agricultural
growth was based in large part on the spread of labor-displacing tech-
nologies, such as the mechanical harvester.
The emphasis on improving yields through greater applications of labor
and biotechnologies was broadened in postwar Japan, in part with assis-
tance from United States-directed development programs. Added to this
prewar development trajectory was the strategy of mechanizing Japanese
agriculture. This change is highlighted in Table 9.3. There was a rapid
expansion in the 1950s and 1960s in the number of electrical and kerosene
motors used on Japanese farms, as well as the introduction of tractors
and mechanical cultivators. This dissemination of labor-displacing tech-
nologies was particularly rapid in the 1950s. For example, the number
of Japanese farm households that had tractors grew nearly four times
from 1956 to 1959 (Okada and Kamiya 1960: 8). This rapid dispersal
was made possible in part by rapidly increasing farm household incomes,
both from farming and non-farming sources.
Unlike improved seed varieties, which lead to economic growth
through expansion of yields, most agricultural machinery, like tractors
and cultivators, contribute to growth by improving labor efficiency. While
agricultural yields did continue to climb after the war, in part due to the
expanded use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, this simply
continued a trend that took place throughout the twentieth century (Table
9.3). The dissemination of machine technologies did not significantly alter
the overall growth rate in rice yields. What changed in the postwar era
was the additional emphasis on maximizing returns to agricultural labor
through mechanization. One consequence of making labor more efficient
is that it becomes redundant.

Table 9.3 The mechanization and productivity of Japanese agriculture, pre- and
postwar

1935 1955 1965

Electric motors 47,100 956,100 1,381,000
Kerosene motors 96,400 1,134,000 (superceded)
Tractors – 1,000 63,000
Mechanical cultivators – 89,000 2,490,000
1885–99 1915–19 1935–39 1955–59 1965–69
Rice yields (kg/10 ares) 214 286 314 376 425
Index 100 133.8 146.8 175.7 198.6
Sources: Ogura Takekasu, Can Japanese Agriculture Survive? (Tokyo: Agricultural
Policy Research Center, 1980); Ebata Akira, Postwar Japanese Agriculture (Tokyo: Shobi
Printing Co.)
 Part-time farming 209
1111
2111
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3 Plate 9.1 Bringing in the rice crop with a combine harvester, Gumma, 1978.
Reproduced from Shashin ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi, (Tokyo: Fumin
4
kyøkai, 1987), p. 172.
5111
6
7 In the Japanese case, the increasing redundancy of rural labor came
8 at a fortuitous historical moment. Due to a variety of domestic and global
9 factors, the Japanese economy began a sustained period of economic
30111 growth in the mid-1950s that lasted until the early 1970s. This growth,
1 which was based in large part on the expansion of heavy industry,
2 provided numerous employment opportunities for rural labor (Ohkawa
3 1965: 480). The freeing up of agricultural labor through mechanization
4 provided opportunities for farm household members, particularly males,
5 to work off-farm. Simultaneously, increasing off-farm incomes provided
6 farm households with the funds to mechanize farm operations. The rapid
7 mechanization of agricultural tasks in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s was
8 accompanied by a shift of farm household labor, particularly males, off-
9 farm and an increase in farm household incomes.
40111 The combination of (1) a solidifying of household ties to local place
1 via expanded private ownership of land; (2) an increase in mechaniza-
2111 tion of agricultural tasks; and (3) rapid economic growth in the national
210 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr

Plate 9.2 Pesticide spraying in a tea field, Kagoshima, 1987. Reproduced from
Shashin ga kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi, (Tokyo: Fumin kyøkai, 1987),
p. 179.

political economy were factors that accompanied the spread of part-time

farming throughout Japan. This was particularly true in rural districts that
were geographically proximate to cities and industrial districts (Jussaume
1991b: 95–7). My empirical research in Okayama Prefecture demon-
strated that there was a geographical element to the spread of part-time
farming in that it expanded out from urban areas towards more remote
rural regions.
Not only did part-time farming become an increasingly popular
strategy, but the nature of part-time farming also evolved. Table 9.4 shows
that in 1955 the majority of Japanese farm households were obtaining
the bulk of their income from the sale of agricultural commodities. This
is similar to the way in which pluriactivity worked for many farm house-
holds before the war. In other words, farming was the primary labor
activity and non-agricultural income sources were used to supplement the
household’s agricultural income. In more remote regions of Japan, partic-
ularly in the 1950s, one common method of pluriactivity of this type was
called dekasegi. This was a practice wherein a household member, often
a male, would temporarily migrate to an urban district to find seasonal
work. Generally, households practicing dekasegi earned less off-farm than
on-farm income.
However, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, an increasing number
of farm household members began to secure full-time off-farm employ-
 Part-time farming 211
1111 Table 9.4 Pluriactivity in Japanese farm households, 1906–95
2111
Year Total farm Of which Full- Part-time (%)
3 households ‘commercial’ time
4 farm households (%) Pre- Type Type
5111 1944 I* II*
6 1906 5,378,337 71.0 29.0
7 1915 5,451,189 68.8 31.2
8 1925 5,463,001 69.8 30.2
9 1935 5,518,275 74.1 25.9
1944 5,536,508 37.3 38.3 24.4
1011 1955 6,043,000 34.9 37.6 27.5
1 1965 5,664,800 21.5 36.7 41.8
2 1975 5,905,100 12.4 25.4 62.1
3111 1985 4,228,738 3,314,931** 15.0 22.9 62.1
4 [non-commercial + class II 11.8 17.9 70.3]
1995 3,443,550 2,651,403** 16.1 18.8 65.1
5
[non-commercial + class II 12.4 14.5 73.1]
6
7 Sources: Agricultural Policy Research Center, Statistical Yearbook, various years (Tokyo:
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries); Hayashi Y¨ichi, ‘Dokusen dankai e no ikø’,
8 in Teruoka Sh¨zø, ed., Nihon nøgyø 100 nen no ayumi (Tokyo: Y¨hikaku, 1996); Kayø
9 Nobufumi et al., Kaitei Nihon nøgyø no kiso tøkei (Tokyo: Nørin tøkei kyøkai, 1977).
20111 Notes
1 * from 1944 part-time farm households were divided into type I (primarily agricultural)
and type II (primarily non-agricultural) households.
2 ** Currently ‘commercial farm households’ (hanbai nøka) are defined as those that farm
3 at least 30 ares of land or sell at least 500,000 yen in farm produce annually. ‘Non-
4 commercial farm households’ generally have very small holdings and grow crops only
5111 for their own consumption.
6
7
8 ment. This trend was made possible by a number of factors, including
9 improved transportation, expanding job opportunities, labor redundancy
30111 in agriculture, and expanded formal educational opportunities for young
1 people. By the 1970s, agriculture had become a supplementary economic
2 activity for most Japanese agricultural households. By the mid-1970s,
3 two-thirds of Japanese farm households earned more than half of their
4 income from non-agricultural sources.
5 This does not mean that farm work ceased to be an important activity
6 for many rural inhabitants. Constant references to part-time farming in
7 Japan as san-chan nøgyø (agriculture practiced by mom, grandma and
8 grandpa) implicitly recognizes that agriculture was, and continues to be,
9 an important activity for many farm household members. Indeed, I would
40111 argue that the social and psychological significance of part-time farming
1 has come to outweigh its economic importance. One of the more vivid
2111 memories I have of my year living in rural Japan in the early 1990s is
212 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr

Plate 9.3 Feeding the chickens, Saitama, 1953. Reproduced from Shashin ga
kataru Shøwa nøgyøshi, (Tokyo: Fumin kyøkai, 1987), p. 220.

of the large number of elderly residents making their way out to their
households’ fields early every morning. Many of the hamlet’s residents,
who had off-farm jobs and did little farm work, often remarked that the
main reason their household kept possession of their agricultural lands
was for the benefit of ojiichan (grandpa) or obaachan (grandma). This
reflected the value given by most hamlet residents to providing elders
with an opportunity to work and make a contribution to the household
by providing food and pocket money.
 Part-time farming 213
1111 This is not to suggest that we should dismiss the economic importance
2111 of farming to Japanese agricultural households or to the nation as a whole.
3 However, for many rural Japanese households, farming has become a side
4 economic activity, rather than a household’s prime source of income. The
5111 persistence of pluriactivity, and the comparatively slow decline in overall
6 farm numbers, particularly in the 1960s and 70s, occurred because a part-
7 time farming strategy served a variety of household economic, social and
8 even political needs. As Ruth Gasson has noted, part-time farming is
9 ‘an accommodation to gradually changing circumstances’ (Gasson 1986:
1011 364). Indeed, it is an ideal adaptive strategy, for it allows certain mem-
1 bers of the household, often the young, the flexibility to participate in new
2 economic opportunities, while maintaining the household’s link to land
3111 and community. This is particularly of value to household members whose
4 off-farm employment opportunities are limited.
5 Thus, as the Japanese economy changed in the postwar era, the form
6 and role of part-time farming adapted along with it. This interpretation
7 about part-time farming in the modern age is hardly unique. Cavazzani
8 (1979: 25) developed a similar argument concerning European part-time
9 farming 20 years ago. The persistence of part-time farming does not mean
20111 that farm households have not altered their approaches towards pluriac-
1 tivity or that these strategies play a stagnant role in society. Indeed, two
2 major strengths of pluriactivity that help explain its persistence are adapt-
3 ability and variability. Given this, it would be reasonable to predict that,
4 as Japanese society continues to change, Japanese agriculture as a whole,
5111 and part-time farming within it, will adapt and reflect the increasing diver-
6 sity of Japanese society.
7
8
Recent trends in Japanese agriculture
9
30111 In the previous two sections, I pointed out that, while pluriactivity was
1 commonplace in twentieth-century Japanese agriculture, as it has been
2 around the world, its scope and form evolved after the Second World
3 War. This happened in tandem with changes in the Japanese political
4 economy, and the dominant mode of agricultural production. I would now
5 like to examine how the structure of Japanese agriculture continues to
6 evolve, even while part-time farming remains the most prevalent strategy
7 used by farm households (Yoshino 1997).
8 One trend that is continuing in Japanese rural areas is the spread of
9 ‘business thinking’ in agricultural households and rural communities
40111 (Sakai 1993). As I noted previously, the notion that farming should be
1 thought of as a business has existed in Japan throughout the twentieth
2111 century (Fukutake 1972). However, the belief that agriculture is just
214 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
another form of business or industry is growing stronger in rural areas
as a result of constant government prodding and changes in the national
and international political economy (McMichael 1993). These pressures
are ideologically expressed in the paradigm of neo-classical economics,
and have resulted in constant calls for the rationalization of Japanese
agriculture (Hayami 1988: 119; Roningen and Dixit 1991: 98–9). Japan-
ese farmers are under constant pressure to industrialize their operations
to an ever greater extent so as to compete against foreign agricultural
producers in their home markets. Consequently, many farmers have come
to accept the idea that they must constantly modernize in order to survive
economically.
Responses to this constant pressure to rationalize are leading to the
development of an increasing variety of new organizational forms in
Japanese agriculture. Sakai (1993: 153–4) provides examples of joint
corporate/farm household farming, such as a fertilizer firm farming land
via contracts with farm households. Certain mechanized tasks are dele-
gated to the firm, others to the farm household. Agricultural cooperatives,
under pressure as their numbers and influence continue to wane, are also
active in the creation of incorporated group farming enterprises.
Another organizational form that is beginning to take a foothold in
Japan is corporate farming. I have written elsewhere about hydroponic
cherry tomato production (Jussaume 1998: 34–5). In that case, a major
Japanese electronics firm established a subsidiary to develop and manage
a farm corporation, legally co-owned with some local farm households.
The households’ role was to provide the land for a five-hectare green-
house cherry tomato operation. Yearly production was estimated at 500
to 550 tons, took place over a nine-month period from fall through spring,
and much of the labor was provided by ‘part-time workers’ (i.e. full-time
workers who are employed seasonally with minimal benefits). What is
particularly interesting is that some of these part-time workers live in
farm households, which are undoubtedly listed as part-time farm house-
holds even though some of their off-farm income comes from employment
in the agribusiness sector.
Most Japanese farm households are not becoming part of corporate
organizational structures. Many small farmers, like their contemporaries
in Europe and the United States, are attempting to survive by producing
high quality products that they market directly to consumers. One farm
household I have studied, which produces beef and organic eggs for direct
sale to local consumers, invites their customers to the farm to pick up
their produce, as well as to participate in the occasional chicken barbecue.
This direct marketing approach, sometimes of organically produced
commodities, is increasingly being practiced in the United States, Europe
 Part-time farming 215
1111 and elsewhere. The success of this strategy is based in part upon building
2111 trust between consumers and producers.
3 Thus, despite the comparatively small scale of operations, many house-
4 holds, including part-timers, continue to farm in Japan, although the total
5111 number of farming households is in decline (Table 9.4). It is reasonable
6 to expect that many part-time farm households will abandon farming in
7 the near future, particularly as the elderly inhabitants of these households
8 pass away. Yet Kada, a recognized expert on part-time farming in Japan,
9 asserts that there will be a steady stream of retired Japanese who will
1011 U-turn to rural areas as part of a strategy to maintain a desirable lifestyle
1 in their old age (Kada 1980). An interesting research project would be
2 to investigate just how prevalent this form of part-time farming will
3111 become in Japan, and what the motivations and rewards will be for those
4 who pursue it.
5 Kada’s argument supports the interpretation that part-time farming in
6 Japan continues to evolve and reflects many of the changes taking place
7 in Japanese society as a whole. Examples of retirees who have not farmed
8 in decades returning to their natal hamlets to take up farming once again
9 does not merely offer a possibility that part-time farming may persist
20111 in some form. It also suggests that, in contrast with the push to make
1 Japanese farms more business-like and economically rational, some
2 people may persist or return to farming for reasons that include, but move
3 beyond, economics. Unlike part-time farming in the early postwar era,
4 where a pluriactive strategy often was a vehicle for younger farm members
5111 to find work in expanding industries, for some households at present
6 part-time farming may be turning into a strategy for melding retirement
7 and farming income, while simultaneously preserving a desirable, rural
8 lifestyle.
9 I also have begun to wonder if, at least in some cases, part-time farming
30111 in Japan may be evolving from san-chan to ni-chan nøgyø (i.e. farming
1 by grandma and grandpa only). Not only are there the above-mentioned
2 cases where retired couples are returning to farm, but also young farm
3 household wives, like their husbands, are increasingly working outside
4 the hamlet in non-farm occupations and refraining from performing agri-
5 cultural tasks. This is directly comparable to the situation in parts of
6 Europe, where an increasing number of farm women are taking off-
7 farm jobs, a trend that is leading to changes in gender roles and women’s
8 identities (Jewell 1999: 107–8; Oldrup 1999: 354). This trend is made
9 increasingly possible in Japan by the further mechanization of farm tasks,
40111 which as Kumagai (1994) has noted, has had a differential impact on the
1 time-allocation patterns of farm household residents by generation and
2111 gender. Younger household members, particularly wives, are no longer
216 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
interested in helping on the farm, and their labor may no longer be needed,
as older household members are able to perform farm tasks with the aid
of machinery.
Finding young people, especially sons by birth or adoption, to work
in agriculture (Sakai 1992: 56–7; Yoshino and Moberg 1989), continues
to be a major challenge in Japanese rural areas, particularly in moun-
tainous areas where off-farm employment opportunities, land resources
and direct marketing opportunities are limited. This has led to a rapid
aging of the rural population, particularly in communities located deep
in the mountains (Takahashi 1988: 99–100), which face very different
problems from peri-urban rural areas (Ouchi 1995). This suggests, too,
the possibility that Japanese rural areas, and the types of agriculture prac-
ticed, could become even more diverse in the future. For example, while
it is conceivable that rural areas near urban centers could witness an
expansion of capital-intensive production of fresh produce for urban
markets, farm households in mountainous areas may experiment with
agro-tourism strategies, as is being done in parts of Europe. In addition,
while few in number, there are now examples, almost unheard of a few
generations ago, of younger Japanese of urban origin taking on farming,
although the cost of land and difficulty in gaining acceptance from estab-
lished local farm families makes this option difficult. In these cases, it
may not be possible for new entrants to survive solely on farm income,
and thus at least some part-time farming may result from households that
resort to a pluriactive strategy to establish and support a farm-based, rural
lifestyle.

Conclusion
In these pages, I have tried to use part-time farming as a vehicle for
outlining some of the changes that have taken place in rural Japan during
the postwar era. This is not to suggest that an examination of the trans-
formation in the structure of agriculture can yield a complete picture of
rural life. Rural does not equal agricultural. Indeed, the growth of part-
time farming of the type where more than half of all household income
is earned off-farm reveals that postwar life in rural Japan has become
increasingly less dependent on agriculture. Certainly, many residents of
contemporary Japanese ‘farm households’ no longer think of themselves
as agriculturists, as people who are dependent on agriculture for their
way of life.
The review of the growth of part-time farming also reveals that pluri-
activity is a strategy that has been used by Japanese farm households to
cope with the steadily increasing pressures of market and state. Many
 Part-time farming 217
1111 of the factors that have been cited as contributing to the growth of part-
2111 time farming – such as rice price support policies, mechanization and the
3 commodification of agriculture – can be interpreted as economic and
4 political influences that largely originated outside of rural communities.
5111 They denote a longstanding interest on the part of policy makers and
6 business leaders to ‘modernize’ Japanese agriculture and have it contribute
7 to the country’s development. Part-time farming has been a popular way
8 for farm households to respond to the opportunities and challenges
9 presented by those conditions created by external agents.
1011 The spread and evolution of part-time farming in postwar Japan, there-
1 fore, is a reflection of the de-agriculturalization of Japanese rural areas
2 as well as the adaptation of farm household residents to the increased
3111 penetration of market and state in their lives. While agriculture continues
4 to be an important activity for many Japanese rural households, neither
5 hamlets nor rural households can be thought of as being primarily
6 ‘agrarian,’ i.e. living a traditional lifestyle built around the seasonal cycles
7 associated with the growth of domesticated plants and animals. This
8 circumstance is neither surprising nor unique to Japan. The same condi-
9 tion has been observed in rural districts in Europe, the United States and
20111 elsewhere. In many parts of the world, particularly the so-called ‘devel-
1 oped’ countries, agriculture no longer is the primary influence in defining
2 rurality, which has become a much more complex phenomenon than it
3 was in the past.
4 Finally, I would argue that the declining influence of agriculture in
5111 rural Japan, and the accompanying spread of part-time farming, should
6 be seen as the culmination of state policies and market trends that began
7 in Japan at the turn of the last century. In other words, the declining
8 significance of agriculture as an industry is a consequence of its having
9 become an industry. One interesting element of the Japanese case is that
30111 farm household residents there are like farm residents in other parts of
1 the world in that they preserve for themselves a role in agriculture, often
2 for reasons that are interpreted by outsiders as ‘irrational.’ Certainly, from
3 the perspective of maximizing returns to investments in labor and capital,
4 small-scale, part-time farms are highly inefficient and thus illogical. Part-
5 time farm household residents are aware of the inefficiencies in their
6 farming operations, but do not abandon farming. I would argue that this
7 is because households combine economic and non-economic goals into
8 their decision making. For example, part-time farming strategies are
9 utilized by some Japanese farm households to augment elderly members’
40111 self-worth by providing them with an opportunity to contribute to their
1 household’s well being. Thus, as in Europe, the persistence of part-time
2111 farming is indicative of a desire by many rural households to balance
218 Raymond A. Jussaume Jr
household members’ needs and maintain a valued way of life. For these
households, farming is not simply a matter of maximizing returns on land,
labor and capital resources. A dilemma facing policy makers is whether
it is in the interest of government to assist these households in the name
of community development or maintaining the ability to produce food
domestically.

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1111
2111 10 Local conceptions of land
3 and land use and the reform
4
5111 of Japanese agriculture
6
7 Iwamoto Noriaki
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
Introduction
6 Most studies of land issues in twentieth-century Japan have taken a legal
7 or institutional approach to the subject. In contrast, this chapter focuses
8 on the customs and norms regarding land ownership among farmers
9 and rural communities, both before and after the postwar land reform. In
20111 my view, such a focus provides an essential basis for developing poli-
1 cies to deal with the crisis facing Japanese agriculture today. That crisis
2 has both exogenous and endogenous origins: on the one hand, the liber-
3 alization of trade in agricultural commodities, including rice, and on the
4 other, the rapid aging of the agricultural labor force. While the former
5111 has narrowed the options available to those Japanese farmers who wish
6 to remain in business, the latter is steadily rendering the exploitation of
7 such agricultural resources as land impossible in many parts of the
8 country. Efforts to promote the structural reform of agriculture – in partic-
9 ular, land-extensive farming and more efficient management of local
30111 agricultural resources – have yielded few positive results to date. Those
1 who speak of the threatened collapse of agriculture in Japan have consid-
2 erable basis for their concern.
3 To be sure, a historical analysis such as this one will not automati-
4 cally yield a prescription for solving the problems facing agriculture at
5 present. But just as distinctive customs and norms related to the owner-
6 ship and use of land have developed over time in other countries, so too
7 have they developed in Japan and, as elsewhere, they remain salient
8 (although by no means unchanged) today. They have affected the imple-
9 mentation of policy in the past, and any policy initiative that fails to take
40111 them into consideration will be unlikely to succeed. What follows, then,
1 constitutes an inquiry into an essential prerequisite for achieving the
2111 elusive goal of structural reform: an understanding of the distinctive
222 Iwamoto Noriaki
customs and norms concerning land that developed over time among rural
ie and mura in the Japanese countryside.
As is well known to students of Japanese history, the ie (or house, in
the sense of a lineage group) became the prevailing form of family struc-
ture in rural Japan in the Tokugawa period, accompanying the shift from
serfdom to small-scale farming. The ie owned the family’s property, occu-
pation, surname and other heritable assets. These were controlled by the
head of the family, almost always male, with the expectation that they
would be passed on to the next generation. The mura (the natural village,
or hamlet) was a clearly demarcated rural community made up of the ie
within its borders, which performed such essential tasks for local farming
as management of irrigation facilities and common lands. The mura also
possessed self-governing functions and made its own rules, which local
residents were expected to obey.
There were four noteworthy features of the ie’s attitudes toward land
at this time: (1) that land was its most important possession, not only
essential to the family’s occupation but also a barometer of its standing
within the community; (2) that land was the collective possession of the
ie, merely entrusted to the current generation by the previous for trans-
mission to the next; (3) that all decisions about the use of land were made
by the head of the ie at any given time; and (4) that all of the ie’s land
and other property would be passed on from one house head to another
(almost always the current head’s eldest son). Younger sons and all daugh-
ters were excluded from inheritance.
The mura also possessed its own customs in relation to land, which
from the Tokugawa era onwards were as follows: (1) the periodic redis-
tribution of land among local farmers, as a means of insuring that the
burden of generating the tax payments, for which the community as a
whole was then responsible, was equitably distributed among local ie
(this custom was practiced only in those parts of the country where crop
failures were common on account of harsh weather, etc.); (2) the return
of pawned land to its original holder even when the date for redeeming
the pawn had passed, if and when the borrower was able to repay the
loan; and (3) the prohibition of transfers of holding or cultivating rights
to land within the mura to persons living elsewhere or even pawning land
to such persons, unless the permission of the mura had been obtained.
The basic, and enduring, principle here was that ‘the land in the mura
should be used for the benefit of those who live in the mura.’
To be sure, these customary practices and attitudes began to change
in the late nineteenth century, with the promulgation of the Meiji Civil
Code and the development of capitalism. The concept of absolute, exclu-
sive private ownership rights gradually spread within Japanese society.
 Conceptions of land and land use 223
1111 But so far as farmers were concerned, that concept was added to prevailing
2111 attitudes toward land. Their fields were both private property and, at the
3 same time, subject to ie and mura control.
4
5111
The postwar land reform and local conceptions of land
6
and land use
7
8 As an attempt to realize change in the ownership and use of farm land,
9 the postwar land reform obviously had an impact on the customs and atti-
1011 tudes toward land that had developed over time in rural Japan. On the one
1 hand, the land reform constituted a break with those customs and attitudes,
2 but on the other hand – and very importantly in accounting for its success
3111 – the land reform also built upon them. In short, there were both ruptures
4 and resonances. Chief among the latter were (1) the sharp distinction the
5 land reform drew between resident and absentee landlords; (2) the empha-
6 sis on farm households, not individual farmers; (3) the priority given to
7 promoting owner-cultivation; and (4) use of hamlet-based expertise. I will
8 discuss each of these in turn before turning to the ruptures.
9 First, thinking of land ownership and use in terms of hamlet bound-
20111 aries was deeply rooted in Japan’s rural society, and such notions as ‘the
1 hamlet’s land is for use within the community’ and ‘outsiders should not
2 gain control of the hamlet’s land’ were widely diffused among local resi-
3 dents. In making a sharp distinction between resident and non-resident
4 landlords at the time of the land reform and treating the latter more
5111 harshly, agricultural policymakers were in harmony with the thinking of
6 most farmers. Indeed, even before the land reform itself, in the context
7 of state management of rice supplies that had begun in 1940, policy-
8 makers had drawn a sharp distinction between resident and absentee
9 landlords, allowing the former as well as producers to retain some rice
30111 for their own use, but denying that benefit to absentee landlords. Behind
1 this differential treatment lay the assessment that, whereas resident land-
2 lords were pillars of their communities and often important agents of
3 agricultural improvement, absentee landlords were concerned only with
4 the collection of rents and, as such, an undesirable source of tension and
5 conflict in the countryside.
6 The land reform was predicated on a similar distinction, with resident
7 landlords permitted to retain some of their previously tenanted land, up
8 to specified acreage limits for owner-cultivation in their locality, and
9 absentee landlords not permitted to retain any previously tenanted land
40111 whatsoever. In defining resident and absentee landlords, however, the
1 architects of the land reform chose to employ the legally recognized
2111 administrative boundaries of cities, towns and villages used in local
224 Iwamoto Noriaki
government, whereas to most farmers it was the boundaries of the natural
village – that is, the hamlet or øaza (section) – that determined whether a
landlord was resident or absentee. There had been debate about how to
define absentee landlords in the Diet, but it is worth noting that ‘not even
government spokesmen questioned the principle that absentee landlords
should hand over all of their tenanted land’ (Øwada 1981: 73).
Second, in carrying out the land reform, the unit employed in deter-
mining mandatory land transfers and the maximum acreage resident
landlords or existing owner-cultivators could retain was the household,
not the individual. Designed primarily as a means of preventing land-
lords from avoiding the forced sale of their holdings by redistributing
ownership title among family members, this policy at the same time
resonated with the traditional view among farmers that land was a family,
not an individual, possession.
Third, the priority given to owner-cultivation, too, resonated with tradi-
tional village norms. Since early modern times, the ideal rural community
had been viewed as one in which cultivators and the land they cultivated
were united. In this sense, tenancy was undesirable, because it impinged
on that unity, and if the political or social tensions brought about by
tenancy exceeded a certain point, efforts to restore the desired unity would
commence. The custom of the return of alienated land mentioned earlier
was one manifestation of this view. Many of the tenancy disputes of
the early twentieth century were also an expression of it, in the sense
that they represented attempts to restore communal solidarity (Saitø 1974:
235–7), as were official efforts to promote owner-cultivation as the most
desirable form of farm management thereafter (Tanaka 1987: 529–41;
Iwamoto 1987: 509–24).
Fourth, the hamlet assistants appointed by land commissions insured
that communal interests would figure prominently in the implementation
of the land reform. There were some 260,000 such assistants nationwide,
or on average 25 assistants per municipality, and it is fair to say that no
hamlet was without at least one. It was their task to carry out the basic
surveys that were needed in planning local land purchases and sales
(Nøchi kaikaku kiroku iinkai 1951: 156–7). That meant first recording
the details of every single parcel of land in the hamlet – its location, type,
area, owner, cultivator, the amount of any rent charged and the existence
of any mortgage or other lien on the property – then specifying the parcels
that were to be transferred under the terms of the land reform, and finally
drafting a plan for those transfers. In short, the work of the hamlet assis-
tants was a vast and complicated undertaking (Nishida 1998a: 187). As
Nishida notes, these hamlet assistants were to be chosen from among
those ‘with good knowledge of local farming conditions’ and ‘an under-
 Conceptions of land and land use 225
1111 standing of the land reform program’ (Nishida 1998a: 186). However,
2111 I disagree with his assessment that the activities of these assistants
3 amounted to ‘direct democracy within the community’ and signified
4 the ‘participation of [ordinary] farmers’ in the reform (Nishida 1998b:
5111 92–3). There was, after all, a marked tendency to choose such influen-
6 tial residents as heads of hamlet agricultural practice associations and
7 heads of hamlet assemblies as hamlet assistants (Nøchi kaikaku kiroku
8 iinkai 1951: 157). They were indeed ‘insiders’ whose mobilization con-
9 tributed to the success of the land reform, but rather than ‘direct
1011 democracy’ or ‘the participation of farmers,’ what they represented were
1 the interests of the community and its long-established values.
2 Nowhere was the continuity between the land reform and communal
3111 norms more apparent than in the outcome of efforts by resident landlords
4 to regain cultivation of their tenanted land. Some 88,000 chø, or 4 percent
5 of all tenanted land, were given back to landlords after the war. Most such
6 returns of land took place in 1945 and early 1946, but some returns were
7 agreed informally even after the land reform had begun and all land trans-
8 fers supposedly made subject to close scrutiny. Rather than a simple
9 expression of the coercive power of landlords (although that was a factor
20111 in some instances), what was operative here was communal problem-solv-
1 ing of a traditional sort. Most of the land so returned had first been let to
2 tenants when the owners had been conscripted into military service during
3 the war or had left to settle in one of Japan’s Asian colonies (Dore 1959:
4 164). As members of the community who had contributed to local society
5111 as resident landlords in the past, their right to survival now had to be
6 respected. Without doubt, concessions such as these helped to defuse land-
7 lord opposition to the land reform (Dore 1959: 173; Øwada 1981: 269).
8 In the ways outlined above, there were resonances between the aims
9 and methods of the land reform and the long-established norms of rural
30111 ie and mura, and these resonances certainly contributed to the land
1 reform’s overall success. But there were ruptures as well, which conflicted
2 with very powerful rural norms, and it is to those I now turn.
3 The clearest manifestation of rupture in the implementation of the
4 land reform at the local level was the land commission secretariat.
5 Municipal land commissions had three secretaries in their service, on
6 average, and those secretaries were expected ‘to be progressive in their
7 thinking, able to understand complicated legislation and committed to
8 scientific approaches based on accurate statistical data’ (Nørinshø nøchika
9 1949: 715). In normal times it would have been impossible to employ
40111 large numbers of people with these abilities in rural areas, but on account
1 of widespread unemployment following Japan’s surrender and the demo-
2111 bilization of its military forces there actually were many individuals with
226 Iwamoto Noriaki
appropriately high educational qualifications living in the countryside.
‘They became secretaries and kindled the enthusiasm for the land reform
that was essential to Japan’s rebirth’ (Øwada 1981: 207).
According to Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) figures, there
were 11,035 land commissions in existence in August 1948, serviced
by 32,462 secretaries (23,735 men and 8,727 women). The average age
of these secretaries was 30 (34 for men, 21 for women), and fully 96
percent of them had completed education beyond the compulsory level:
upper elementary school graduates, 36 percent; middle school graduates,
56 percent; university or college/professional school graduates, 4 percent.
Some 20 percent of all secretaries consisted of evacuees from urban
areas, demobilized military personnel and repatriates from Japan’s former
colonies (Øwada 1981: 208). These secretaries ‘replaced conservative
landlords as local leaders and, as pioneers of rural democratization,
devoted themselves to realizing land reform. . . . That they worked directly
with culturally deprived, politically inexperienced farmers to implement
the tasks of land commissions is the main reason why the land reform
was able to achieve greater than anticipated success in the short span of
only two years’ (Nørinshø nøchika 1949: 721). As the above description
makes clear, the land commission secretaries functioned as outsiders,
bringing new and far less parochial ideas and norms to the communities
in which they worked (for an example, see Dore 1959: 155–6). Without
their contributions, the land reform would not have been at all as thor-
ough and comprehensive as it was.
A second rupture relates to one of the underlying principles of the land
reform, the idea that the ownership and use of farm land entailed oblig-
ations to society as a whole. The record of litigation challenging the
constitutionality of the land reform – some 119 such cases had been
lodged in district courts by 1950 – shows that this idea went well beyond
prevailing conceptions. At issue in these cases was article 29 of the
[postwar] constitution:

The right to own or to hold property is inviolable. Property rights

shall be defined by law, in conformity with the public welfare. Private
property may be taken for public use upon just compensation there-
fore.

Plaintiffs asserted (1) that selling the land they had been forced to
surrender to tenants in order to create owner-cultivators violated clause
3 of article 29 in that the land thus transferred was not destined for ‘public
use’; and (2) that the purchase price paid to them did not amount to ‘just
compensation.’
 Conceptions of land and land use 227
1111 The Supreme Court handed down a final decision in one of these cases
2111 on December 23, 1953. This particular case concerned the matter of just
3 compensation, not the constitutionality of the land reform per se, but no
4 decision about compensation could be made without reference to the
5111 public character of the land reform. As the following citations from the
6 decision make clear, that public character was recognized.
7 In relation to article 29, for example:
8
9 Property rights are determined by law to insure public welfare. Thus,
1011 when necessary to maintain or promote public welfare, restrictions
1 may be placed on the right to use, dispose of or otherwise benefit from
2 property, and similarly, specific restrictions may be placed on the value
3111 of property, rather than consigning its price solely to market forces’.
4 (Quoted in Nøchi kaikaku shiryø
5 hensan iinkai 1978: 693)
6
7 Moreover, the decision cited the controls imposed on the ownership
8 rights of farm land during the war:
9
20111 Even before passage of the land reform legislation, restrictions on
1 the free disposition of farm land were in place, as were restrictions
2 on using cultivable land for non-agricultural purposes. Where rents
3 were payable in cash, they were set at a uniform level, and even the
4 price of farm land was regulated. In these ways, strict controls were
5111 placed on the ownership rights of landlords, and eventually the price
6 of land was so controlled by law that there was virtually no scope
7 for market values to exist. . . . Such changes to the character of owner-
8 ship rights as applied to farm land were legal measures to realize the
9 continuing national policy of establishing owner-cultivators. In other
30111 words, these changes must be seen as having been carried out by law
1 in a manner in conformity with the public welfare as set out in clause
2 2 of article 29 of the Constitution (quoted in Nøchi kaikaku shiryø
3 hensan iinkai 1978: 696–7).
4
5 Nowhere in this decision was it explicitly stated that the land reform
6 was in all respects consonant with the public welfare, but a high court
7 decision of November 25, 1953, which the Supreme Court used as a
8 precedent, had so determined:
9
40111 As is clear from the statement of purpose in article 1 of the Owner-
1 Farmer Establishment Special Measures Law, the land reform which
2111 that law set in motion aimed at realizing such essential benefits to
228 Iwamoto Noriaki
the public welfare as security for cultivators of the land, the rapid
and widespread establishment of owner-cultivators who could enjoy
the just fruits of their labor and, by the more effective use of land
for agricultural purposes, the promotion of greater agricultural produc-
tion and of democratic trends in rural communities.
(Quoted in Hosogai 1978: 328)

Thus, the redistribution of private property with just compensation to

its original owners was in the public interest because it promoted the
eminently public goals of rural democratization and greater agricultural
output. The land reform was constitutional.
In so deciding, the Supreme Court also found in favor of the principle
of land ownership rights on which the land reform was premised: that
such rights had a public character (Noda 1998: 192). As noted earlier,
there was also a ‘public’ dimension in the traditional conception of land
ownership and use in the countryside: farm land was not owned by indi-
viduals, but by the ie, and was subject to control by the mura. To a
degree, then, in denying that farm land was simply private property, the
land reform resonated with this traditional view, but its definition of
‘public’ went well beyond that prevailing in the countryside. In the tradi-
tional view, the public interest was confined to each particular rural
community and involved only its collective residents. In contrast, the land
reform introduced a far more sweeping definition of the public character
of land ownership, which applied to the nation as a whole.

Agricultural legislation in the aftermath of the land

reform
How did the conception of land ownership introduced by the land reform
fare in subsequent years? Not at all well, in my opinion. Beginning almost
immediately after the completion of the reform in 1948, mechanisms for
the public control of land ownership were steadily weakened, a process
which culminated in the enactment of the Agricultural Land Law in 1952.
The full implications of this would become apparent during the years of
Japan’s so-called ‘economic miracle,’ c. 1955–72, and during the ‘bubble
economy’ of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I will return to these impli-
cations later, but first it will be useful to examine the retreat from public
control of land ownership in greater detail.
First, there was the ending of preemptive purchase of land affected by
the land reform. The stipulation that the state had the right of preemp-
tive purchase of any land that had been sold to cultivators at the time of
the land reform was one of the clearest manifestations of the reform’s
 Conceptions of land and land use 229
1111 public character, and one to which Occupation officials in the Natural
2111 Resources Section (NRS) attached great importance. A memorandum of
3 June 28, 1946 which H.G. Schenck, the NRS chief, showed to Agriculture
4 Minister Wada insisted that a ban on the alienation of any land purchased
5111 from the state during the land reform, whether money changed hands or
6 not, should remain in force for a period of 30 years; in those cases where
7 the state acknowledged that continuing owner-cultivation was no longer
8 possible, the state itself should purchase the land in question. MAF
9 responded with a policy of compulsory state purchase of such land in
1011 perpetuity. However, the revision of the Land Registration Law in July
1 of 1950 eliminated the recording of rental values, which had served as
2 the basis for determining the price of land to be purchased during the
3111 land reform, thus undermining price controls on farm land and rendering
4 the operation of the existing preemptive purchase system impossible.
5 Seeing no chance of re-establishing that system, MAF instead opted for
6 an ordinance requiring that, if land purchased from the state at the time
7 of the land reform was sold during the ten years following its purchase,
8 a portion of the difference between the original purchase price and subse-
9 quent sale price must be repaid to the state. This approach was retained
20111 in the Agricultural Land Law, but by the late 1950s the original ten-year
1 period had expired, and any state claims on such land transactions ceased
2 to exist (Øwada 1985: 113). Precisely why the right of preemptive
3 purchase was allowed to lapse remains unclear to this day, but an expla-
4 nation later offered by an official active in agricultural policymaking at
5111 the time may be relevant: ‘Because the operation without time limit of
6 controls of this sort [on only one category of land, that transferred to
7 owner-cultivators during the land reform] would have destabilized the
8 agricultural land market as a whole’ (Satake 1998: 15).
9 Second came the abolition of price controls on farm land. Although
30111 the Japanese government was inclined to maintain controls on agricul-
1 tural land prices after the land reform, Occupation headquarters [SCAP]
2 was not, and the NRS insisted to MAF that they be eliminated. The reason
3 given was that, with continued regulation of the maximum size of hold-
4 ings and of tenant rents, price controls were unnecessary, but the general
5 uneasiness within SCAP about direct interference in private property
6 rights was also at work here.
7 The issue first surfaced in 1950, when the land registration law was
8 revised as part of the general revision of the local tax system in accordance
9 with the Shoup Recommendations. As mentioned in passing above, the
40111 recording of rental values that had been central to the price control policy
1 was eliminated in the revised law. The government responded immediately
2111 by issuing an ordinance stipulating that any land still changing hands under
230 Iwamoto Noriaki
the terms of the land reform could only be sold to cultivators at its former
controlled price and that the price paid for any land now acquired by the
state to maintain the acreage limits decreed by the land reform would be
equivalent to ten times the average rental value of the land in question.
MAF officials thought at the time that this ordinance could be used to con-
trol land prices. (Nørinshø nøchikyoku nøseika 1950: 1027).
The issue of price controls resurfaced during Diet interpellation of the
Agricultural Land Law. In response to a question from the floor, a govern-
ment spokesman stated that as clause 3 of article 3 of the proposed law
required official permission for any change in the title to arable or pasture
land, it would be possible for the state to attach conditions that restrained
undue price increases. However, shortly after the law had been passed,
the vice-minister of agriculture advised regional agricultural officials that
the clause in question could not in fact be used to attach conditions that
affected price in the absence of any overall policy of price control (Nøchi
kaikaku shiryø hensan iinkai 1980: 1160). Precisely what had brought
about this change in interpretation remains unclear, but once again the
assessment of Satake Goroku provides some insight: ‘At a time when
land prices were escalating everywhere in the country, it was likely that
the feasibility of realizing price controls of any meaningful sort would
be called into question’ (1998: 15).
The third factor was the demise of the idea of public management of
farm land. As the land reform was nearing completion in mid-1948, MAF
began considering post-reform agricultural policy. An internal paper dated
August 2, 1948 by Øwada Keiki put forward particularly wide-ranging
proposals to ‘assure effective farm operations that built on the achieve-
ments of the land reform.’ These included ‘efforts to increase output by
overcoming the problems caused by overly small-scale farming’ and, most
significantly, reliance on municipal land commissions as an instrument
of state oversight of farm land to insure its efficient use. Specifically,
land commissions would be empowered to regulate all changes to owner-
ship rights, leases of land and changes in cultivating rights within their
jurisdictions (Nøchi kaikaku shiryø hensan iinkai 1975: 738–43).
Based on the same principle of the public character of farm land that had
infused the land reform, Øwada’s proposals aimed at solving the pressing
problem of food supply facing Japan in the late 1940s by promoting the
structural reform of agriculture. Continued control of all rights pertaining
to land would now be used to encourage farming on a larger, more efficient
scale than that achieved by the land reform itself, whether by getting groups
of very small landowners to join together in cooperative farming or by
allowing the most committed and capable farmers to gain cultivating rights
of one sort or another to additional land.
 Conceptions of land and land use 231
1111 This proposal, representing the thinking within MAF at the time, met
2111 with resistance from two quarters. On the one hand, members of the
3 conservative parties in the Diet were uneasy about any further regulation
4 of property rights, and provisions relating to the management of farm
5111 land by land commissions or agricultural cooperatives were struck from
6 the proposed legislation (Nøchi kaikaku shiryø hensan iinkai 1975:
7 780–1). On the other hand, and much more decisively, SCAP was
8 opposed. The thrust of Occupation policy had begun to shift in 1948, and
9 a reconsideration of previous policy toward capital and labor was taking
1011 place. This manifested itself in two ways so far as the land reform was
1 concerned. First, there was a narrowing in SCAP’s definition of the scope
2 of reform from the total reorganization of agriculture to the redistribu-
3111 tion of ownership rights to land under cultivation at the time. Second,
4 while committed to efforts to maintain what the (now more narrowly
5 defined) land reform had achieved – thus differing from the conservative
6 parties in the Diet – SCAP was opposed to the introduction of any
7 measures not already included in the land reform legislation. Continued
8
state interference in ownership rights and now in farm management, as
9
Øwada’s proposals intended, was therefore found to be objectionable
20111
(Iwamoto 1979: 217–22).
1
Despite this setback, efforts by agricultural officials to realize the public
2
management of farm land at the community level continued thereafter,
3
notably in discussions leading to passage of the Basic Agricultural Law
4
5111 of 1961. For example, at a meeting of the Sub-Committee on Structural
6 Problems in December 1959, Ogura Takekazu put forward a draft policy
7 to the effect that ‘all transactions in farm land should be supervised by
8 a government agency in order to stabilize land prices at a reasonable level
9 and contribute to structural policies.’ In the discussion that followed,
30111 committee member Øuchi Tsutomu supported the idea but took it a step
1 further: ‘There should also be local bodies, whether at the village or
2 hamlet level, to develop plans for the use of farm land and facilitate at
3 least a degree of cooperative management among local farmers’ (Kajii
4 1999: 110).
5 The sub-committee’s final report took up this point, stating that ‘some
6 form of public management of farm land at the municipal level is essen-
7 tial to deal with tenanted land and land transfers, although its precise
8 form and methods will require further scrutiny’ (emphasis added). The
9 report also observed that ‘the cooperative management of farm land to
40111 plan and execute improvements in agricultural technology and the struc-
1 ture of farm management at the municipal level might also be included
2111 in this public management system’ (Sekiya 1994: 10).
232 Iwamoto Noriaki
The same point of view was manifested in proposals for the estab-
lishment of land management associations in the mid-1960s. Not only
would these associations serve to promote the expansion of farm opera-
tions by their regulation of all land transfers and leases, but it was also
expected they would play a role in bringing about the rationalization of
land prices (Nørinsuisanshø hyakunenshi hensan iinkai 1981; Øwada
1965). However, the draft legislation put before the Diet in 1965 and
again in 1966 met with resistance from both the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party and the Japan Socialist Party, and failed to become law (Tøbata
1965: 132). Numerous reasons have been cited for the bill’s failure – that
as it offered no inducements to get marginal landowners to abandon
farming, it was unlikely to promote structural reform; that intervention
of the sort proposed could only work to the disadvantage of small-scale
farmers; and that the proposed associations would be unable to cope with
the volume of work caused by rising land prices (Nørinsuisanshø
hyakunen hensan iinkai 1981: 324). But escalating land prices almost
certainly were the key factor, as they rendered the sort of controls on
land transfers envisaged by the legislation virtually impossible (Kurauchi
1998: 79). As we shall see in the next section, those same price increases
led the governing conservative party to concentrate in the future on agri-
cultural policies that appealed to farmers as the owners of ever more
valuable real estate.

The ‘economic miracle,’ land price escalation and

attitudes toward land
It was the dramatic increase in all land prices during the postwar era that
exerted the most profound impact on farmers’ attitudes toward their land.
Land prices began increasing in the early 1950s, just when Japan’s
economic recovery from the war was nearing completion, and they
continued to increase thereafter at a rate far outstripping increases in
both GNP and wholesale prices. There were three periods of particularly
rapid increase: from the late 1950s to early 1960s; during the early 1970s;
and from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Although various land poli-
cies were attempted in these periods, they only treated the symptoms of
the underlying problem, and the economy was ever more influenced by
land values.
The increases in the value of farm and forest land were also dramatic,
nowhere more so than in the case of farm land near expanding cities and
in areas considered prime targets for development as golf courses, ski
resorts and other leisure facilities. That these price increases heightened
awareness of agricultural land as an asset is widely recognized, and it is
 Conceptions of land and land use 233
1111
2111
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8 Figure 10.1 Value of agricultural land sales and the ratio of that value to the
9 total value of agricultural production, 1960–96.
20111 Source: Based on data in Nøgyø shokuryø kanren sangyø no keizai keisan.
1
2 worth noting that price increases also had a direct impact on cash flows
3 in the farm household economy. As shown in Figure 10.1, the total value
4 of agricultural land sales began to increase after 1960, rising above three
5111 trillion yen in 1969 and exceeding six trillion yen (an amount equivalent
6 to more than 80 percent of the value of agricultural production) during
7 the turbulent early 1970s. The value of land sales declined thereafter,
8 but rose sharply again during the bubble economy of the late 1980s and
9 early 1990s, reaching 90 percent of the value of agricultural production
30111 before leveling off to roughly 80 percent in subsequent years. It seems
1 clear not only that farmers were increasingly aware of their land as an
2 asset, but also that a significant number of them were cashing in on its
3 enhanced value.
4 As discussed previously, public control of farm land prices was aban-
5 doned in the process of formulating the Agricultural Land Law. Nor was
6 there any serious consideration of price policies in discussions leading to
7 passage of the Basic Agricultural Law, even though the purchase or
8 leasing of additional land was essential to the creation of self-sustaining
9 farm households at which that law aimed. This remains one of the great
40111 puzzles of postwar agricultural policymaking, but some idea of why
1 virtually no attention was paid to land prices can be inferred from the
2111 recollections of key participants. For example, according to Tøbata
234 Iwamoto Noriaki
Seiichi, who chaired the Commission on the Basic Problems of Agri-
culture, ‘There was no discussion of land prices during the year the
commission met. . . . Indeed, it was as if MAF was delighted with price
increases, as evidence of the flourishing state of agriculture. Ogura tried
to bring the matter up, but others in the ministry told him not to and he
appeared to have given up’ (Nørinsuisanshø hyakunenshi hensan iinkai,
1981: 796–7). Øwada Keiki observed: ‘There were various opinions
[about land prices] in the ministry, but no one argued that the ministry
itself should take steps to bring prices down. The increases weren’t
welcomed, at least not openly, but they weren’t really condemned either.
They were just accepted as more or less inevitable, and as a result it
is clear that intervention of any sort was delayed’ (Nørinsuisanshø
hyakunenshi hensan iinkai 1981: 807). According to Kajii Isoshi, several
items related to land prices had been included in the discussion papers
prepared by the MAF secretariat, but none of them was discussed in any
detail in the sessions of the Commission on the Basic Problems of
Agriculture. Ogura, the head of the secretariat, then stressed the problem
of land prices in his explanation of the report on the Agricultural Basic
Law and urged MAF to take urgent action (Kajii 1993: 203). Perhaps the
most one can say is that, while at least some officials were aware of the
land price issue, they were even more keenly aware of the political and
administrative difficulties of resurrecting any sort of price controls.
With no mention made of land prices in the Agricultural Basic Law
and the idea of local land management associations stymied, all chance
of the direct control of land prices was lost. The one remaining possi-
bility was to use the provisions relating to changes in land use in the
Agricultural Land Law to keep the price paid when a change of use was
permitted from affecting land prices in general. This proved well-nigh
impossible in practice, however – and indeed the Agricultural Land Law
itself proved to be a weak instrument for promoting rational land use and
the preservation of high-quality farm land in the absence of any effec-
tive system of control over land-use planning nationwide. In such
circumstances, agricultural policymaking in Japan steadily veered toward
policies predicated on continued price increases and the appeal of those
increases to Japanese farmers. The easing of criteria for approving changes
in land use is a typical example, with the easing facilitated by the fact
that the criteria were not specified by law or ordinance, but by vice-
ministerial directive. At the same time, the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party found diverse ways of garnering votes in rural districts, including
support for zoning changes, highway construction and the location of
public facilities and factories on the ‘new’ parcels of non-agricultural
land that could be set aside for such purposes when field boundaries were
 Conceptions of land and land use 235
1111 straightened in land adjustment projects. Portrayed as contributing to rural
2111 development, such measures also increased the value of the parcels of
3 land affected, and the revenue from their sale to the state or to private
4 interests went directly to at least some local farmers. Catering to the prop-
5111 erty owning instincts of farmers, especially those in urban areas, proved
6 a very effective vote-winning strategy indeed.
7
8
Looking ahead to the structural reform of agriculture
9
1011 Without doubt, the attitudes of farm families and rural communities
1 toward land changed markedly during the period of rapid economic
2 growth, in no small measure because of the thrust of agricultural policies
3111 in those years, which increasingly appealed to farmers as the owners of
4 land. The public character of agricultural policy, particularly of policy
5 toward agricultural land, which had infused the land reform got lost in
6 the shuffle as the main architects of that policy – MAF officials, Diet
7 Members (especially those belonging to agriculture-related zoku, or
8 ‘policy tribes’) and agricultural cooperatives – each sought their own
9 greatest advantage. That is one of the major reasons why the Japanese
20111 public lost confidence in the nation’s agricultural policy, and unless its
1 public character is re-established – in an atmosphere of greater trans-
2 parency than has been the case during the past 40 years or so – that
3 confidence will not be regained.
4 In that connection, it would be relevant to return to the main theme
5111 of this chapter, the attitudes of the ie and mura toward land that first
6 came into being in the early modern era. Granted, changes in those atti-
7 tudes have occurred as market forces have penetrated the countryside.
8 Indeed, the patriarchal ie itself was legally abolished when a new civil
9 code was implemented in 1948. But the attitudes still exist, albeit in atten-
30111 uated form, and still influence the behavior of rural households and rural
1 communities. The desire to pass on the family assets to the next gener-
2 ation is, after all, one of the main factors that sustains those farmers in
3 less-favored areas in their farming operations, and recent attempts at orga-
4 nizing group farming operations can be traced in many respects to early
5 mura norms and practices in regard to the community’s land.
6 Table 10.1 presents those findings (excluding Hokkaido) relevant to
7 communal norms in surveys carried out for the Agricultural Censuses of
8 1970 to 1990, and from it the following conclusions can be drawn:
9
40111 1 Communities have become increasingly mixed in population, with
1 the non-agricultural population reaching 84 percent in 1990. Farmers
2111 are now a minority within ‘farming’ communities. Yet it is important
236 Iwamoto Noriaki
Table 10.1 Results of surveys of farm communities, 1970–90 (excluding
Hokkaido)

1970 1980 1990

Number of farm communities 135,206 135,200 133,147
Average no. households per community 83 142 174
farm households (%) 45.8 23.8 16.0
non-farm households (%) 54.2 76.2 84.0
Communities by proportion of farm
households (%)
50% or more 78.0 64.3 51.8
80% or more 50.0 34.2 18.4
Territorial boundaries of the community (%)
its arable land clearly demarcated 82.6 – –
its forests and open fields clearly demarcated 57.9 – –
overall boundaries of the community clear 79.4 – –
Date of community’s establishment (%)
before the Meiji era 95.0 – –
after the Meiji era 3.2 – –
post-Second World War 1.8 – –
Farm communities owning forests and
fields (%) 46.5 43.3 –
exclusive ownership 25.8 – –
shared with other community or communities 12.8 – –
both of the above 7.9 – –
Farm communities owning arable land (%) 6.8 5.0 –
Farm communities owning reservoirs
or ponds (%) 18.2 12.4 –
Local road maintenance and repair (%)
carried out as group work 73.6 – –
all households take part 53.1 – –
Farm path maintenance and repair (%)
carried out as group work 74.0 70.8 66.2
all households take part 52.0 – –
Irrigation and drainage facilities (%)
maintenance work carried out as group work 63.8 64.5 76.1
all households take part 43.6 – –
Number of community meetings per year (%) – – –
1–2 – 17.8 23.3
3–4 – 22.0 22.9
5–6 – 22.7 20.3
7–9 – 7.4 6.1
10–12 – 19.2 18.6
13 or more – 10.9 8.9
Communities where farmers participate in
agricultural production organizations (group
cultivation, joint use of equipment, livestock
organizations, etc.) (%) – 24.2 40.3
Communities involved in group crop
diversification (%) – – 17.7
Source: Based on data in Nøgyø sh¨raku chøsa høkokusho for the relevant years.
 Conceptions of land and land use 237
1111 to note that even in 1990 farm households constituted over half of
2111 all households in 52 percent of all rural communities.
3 2 The great majority of agricultural communities possess clearly defined
4 borders, and hence a sense of territorial specificity.
5111 3 The overwhelming majority of rural communities were established
6 before the Meiji era.
7 4 Over 40 percent of rural communities own such property as forests
8 and fields.
9 5 Even in the mixed rural communities of today, the maintenance of
1011 field paths and irrigation facilities is usually carried out by local resi-
1 dents, often including non-farming residents.
2 6 Regular community meetings are held (although their frequency
3111 varies markedly from roughly one per year to one or more per month).
4 7 The proportion of communities whose residents participate in agri-
5 cultural production organizations of one sort or another has risen,
6 with most of those organizations being based in the community itself.
7
8 It is therefore clear that there has been continuity as well as change, and
9 a variety of important communal activities (such as management of field
20111 paths and irrigation facilities) are still carried out.
1 Now let us turn to a survey into the attitudes of the members of farm
2 households. Tables 10.2 and 10.3 show the results of a survey carried
3 out by the Nippon Agricultural Research Institute in 1991 among 91
4 households in the Toyohara district of Yamagata Prefecture, the Iwamuro
5111 district of Nara Prefecture and the Yashirohara district of Yamaguchi
6 Prefecture, in which all household members in residence who were over
7 the age of 20 were asked to complete a questionnaire. A total of 247
8 questionnaires were returned, with those in their twenties or thirties consti-
9 tuting 20 percent of the total, those in their forties or fifties constituting
30111 40 percent and those over 60 also constituting 40 percent. The ques-
1 tionnaire contained 20 questions in all, with questions 1 through 13 dealing
2 with ie consciousness and questions 14 through 20 dealing primarily with
3 mura consciousness.
4 Concerning the former (Table 10.2), affirmative answers (agree; some-
5 what agree) to all questions outnumbered the negative (disagree; some-
6 what disagree). Affirmative answers were particularly pronounced in
7 relation to the importance of family ancestors (questions 1 and 2) and the
8 importance of everyone working together to make farming a success (ques-
9 tion 10). There was also a fairly high proportion of affirmative answers to
40111 questions related to the importance of retaining ownership of the family’s
1 land so that it could be passed on to (ideally, one member of) the next
2111 generation, that is, assuring the future of the ie (questions 3, 12 and 13)
Table 10.2 The ie consciousness of farmers (% responding to each question)

Question Agree Somewhat Cannot Somewhat Disagree

agree decide disagree
1 It is essential to maintain ancestral graves and ceremonies
for the ancestors. 87.9 8.1 3.2 0.0 0.8
2 I believe our ancestors watch over our family’s future. 68.4 15.0 13.8 0.4 2.4
3 I hope our family always remains in farming
(even if only part time). 44.1 16.2 32.0 4.0 3.6
4 It is all right to adopt a son-in-law to secure a successor. 41.3 11.7 34.0 4.9 8.1
5 It is the responsibility of the successor to care for his parents. 52.6 16.2 22.3 1.6 7.3
6 It is best for the successor to live with his parents, even if
he is married. 42.2 16.0 36.3 3.4 2.1
7 Until the successor comes of age, the head of the family
should remain fully responsible for management both of
farming operations and all other household matters. 63.2 14.6 16.2 4.0 2.0
8 When a parent and a child disagree, the child should defer
to the parent. 22.7 14.2 47.4 6.5 9.3
9 A daughter-in-law should defer to the views of her
mother-in-law. 27.1 19.0 42.5 2.4 8.9
10 In farming it is important that everyone in the family pitches
in and cooperates unselfishly to get the work done. 72.1 16.2 8.5 1.6 1.6
11 Even those in the family who have other jobs should help
with the farm work as much as possible. 55.9 21.1 17.8 2.4 2.8
12 The land inherited from the ancestors is held in trust, to be
looked after carefully and passed on to the next generation. 54.7 17.4 21.4 4.0 2.4
13 Only one person should inherit the house and land, so that
the family can continue with farming. 59.1 13.0 20.6 2.8 4.5
Average of responses 54.0 15.3 23.2 2.8 4.7
Source: Akashima Masao, ‘Kazoku to nøgyø ni kansuru ankeeto,’ Nippon nøgyø kenky¨jo, Nøgyø mondai, no. 5 (1992), pp. 65–6.
 Conceptions of land and land use 239
1111 and doing everything possible to assist in the family’s farming operations
2111 (question 11). On the other hand, there were relatively few affirmative
3 answers to questions 8 and 9, both of which concerned intergenerational
4 relations within the family. That parent–child relations (question 8)
5111 generated more negative responses than did relations between daughters-
6 in-law and mothers-in-law (question 9) may well reflect sample bias.
7 Although not to the same degree as in ie consciousness, affirmative
8 answers to questions concerning mura consciousness (Table 10.3)
9 outnumbered negative responses. This was particularly the case in rela-
1011 tion to the role of the community (question 14). In addition, there were
1 many affirmative responses to questions about the value of local festi-
2 vals and beliefs (question 16) and community service (question 17). On
3111 the other hand, there were relatively few affirmative responses to ques-
4 tion 15 concerning the binding power of decisions made by the community
5 and to question 18 concerning the participation of the community in deci-
6 sions about local land use or sale. Indeed, there were relatively few
7 negative responses to those questions either, with most people opting for
8 a neutral answer to both. It would appear that the older idea that ‘land
9 in the community should be cultivated by members of the community’
20111 was still operative (questions 18 and 19), but some resistance to inter-
1 vention by the community in the exercise of private property rights (that
2 is, transactions in land or changes in land use) had now surfaced.
3 As the author of this questionnaire himself acknowledges (Akashima
4 1992: 72–3), some caution is necessary in interpreting the results of
5111 opinion surveys, especially when the survey deals with attitudes toward
6 the ie and the mura. One is likely to get ‘conventional’ or ‘expected’
7 (tatemae tekina) responses rather than candid opinions (honne), and as a
8 result one might be tempted to conclude that orientations toward the
9 ie and the mura remain stronger than in fact they are. That only adult
30111 family members still in residence were surveyed and those who had left
1 home were excluded is a further problem. It is therefore likely that this
2 survey over-reports affirmative attitudes.
3 That said, it is truly surprising that despite all the massive changes in
4 the actual circumstances of both ie and mura over the past 20 to 30 years
5 there does not appear to have been an equivalent degree of change at the
6 normative level. Today’s rural families and rural communities have not
7 succumbed totally to the logic of market economics, and regional and inter-
8 generational differences notwithstanding, long-established customs and
9 attitudes related to land survive. Rather than being an obstacle to ‘pro-
40111 gress,’ as most political theorists believed during the heyday of modern-
1 ism, this legacy of the past could well prove the basis for important new
2111 departures in Japanese agriculture.
Table 10.3 The mura consciousness of farmers (% responding to each question)

Question Agree Somewhat Cannot Somewhat Disagree

agree decide disagree
14 The role of the mura (hamlet community) in farming villages
will remain important in the future. 57.5 20.6 18.2 1.6 2.0

15 Residents should abide by mura decisions, even if they find

them to their disadvantage. 29.6 22.7 36.8 4.5 6.5

16 Customary rites and celebrations in honor of the guardian

deities of the mura should always be observed. 52.2 24.3 16.6 3.6 3.2

17 No matter how busy they are, everyone should make time to

perform the communal tasks the mura has agreed. 53.8 24.3 17.8 0.8 3.2

18 If at all possible, title to arable land within the mura should

not be transferred to anyone outside the mura. 41.3 19.8 32.4 2.8 3.6

19 Efforts should be made to insure that all land within the mura
is cultivated by residents of the mura. 42.5 20.6 29.5 3.2 4.0

20 The consent of the mura should be obtained for the sale or

change in use of any arable land within its boundaries. 20.6 15.8 39.7 6.9 17.0

Average of responses 42.5 21.2 27.1 3.3 5.7

Source: Same as for Table 10.2.
 Conceptions of land and land use 241
1111 Just as those postmodern political theorists in North America who
2111 argue for a new communitarianism to combat the problems of apathy and
3 anomie in their societies (for example, Avineri and de-Shalit 1992;
4 Mulhall and Swift 1996) are not engaging in mere nostalgia for the past,
5111 so too I am not indulging here in nostalgia for some ‘golden’ rural past
6 in Japan. On the contrary, the communitarianism of rural families and
7 hamlets was parochial in the extreme, and the ‘public’ interest served
8 was confined to those living within the hamlet’s borders. That sort of
9 inward-looking narrowness must be transformed into the more open
1011 communitarianism of civil society. The campaigns for organic farming
1 and the direct delivery of fresh, wholesome produce to urban consumers
2 that have expanded rapidly in recent years, as well as diverse other forms
3111 of closer contact between city and countryside, have great promise as a
4 means of achieving just that. Infused as such campaigns are with volun-
5 tarism, pluralism and the partnership of ordinary citizens in a common
6 enterprise, they constitute not only a quest for a counterweight to the
7 powers of the modern state and market economy, but also a means to
8 broaden the definition of ‘public interest’ to include all participants, in
9 this particular case both farmers and urban residents, and to ease the
20111 conflicts of interest and resultant social frictions that might well occur
1 between them from time to time.
2 And there will be a need for agricultural policies that coincide with
3 and support the growing ‘communitarianism of civil society’ of this sort.
4 More specifically: (1) Once the proper sphere of the central government
5111 has been clearly delineated (to include such matters as trade in agricul-
6 tural commodities, the preservation and use of farm land, regulation of
7 supply and demand in agricultural commodities, price policies, etc.), a
8 considerable degree of authority should be delegated to the regional and/or
9 local level to determine how best to meet agreed policy objectives; (2)
30111 Regional and local policy should be based to the greatest possible extent
1 on the best practices that have been developed by farmers and urban
2 consumers in those areas, as a vital means of empowering residents and
3 giving them a greater stake in policy outcomes; and (3) Behind-the-scenes
4 ‘interest-trading’ should be eliminated and transparency restored to deci-
5 sion making at all levels so as to reaffirm the public character of
6 agriculture, which would result not only in encouraging farmers to
7 consider the public good in their actions, but also in restoring the confi-
8 dence of the broader Japanese public in their country’s agriculture and
9 agricultural policy (Iwamoto 1999).
40111
1
2111
242 Iwamoto Noriaki

References
Akashima Masao. 1992. ‘Kazoku to nøgyø ni kansuru ankeeto,’ Nippon nøgyø
kenky¨jo Nøgyø mondai, No. 5.
Avineri, Shlomo and Avner de-Shalit. 1992. Communitarianism and Individualism.
London: Oxford University Press.
Dore, Ronald P. 1959. Land Reform in Japan. London: Oxford University Press.
Hosogai Daijirø. 1978. ‘Kaisetsu.’ In Nøchi kaikaku shiryø sh¨sei, vol. 8, ed. Nøchi
kaikaku shiryø hensan iinkai. Tokyo: Nøsei chøsakai.
Iwamoto Noriaki. 1979. ‘Nøchi kaikaku.’ In Taikei Nihon gendai shi 5: senryø to
sengo kaikaku, ed. Kanda Fumito. Tokyo: Nihon hyøronsha.
–––– 1987. ‘Sengo nøsei to jisakunøshugi – nøgyø kihon hø o meguru rongi o
ch¨shin ni. In Family Farms no hikakushiteki kenky¨, ed. Shiina Shigeaki. Tokyo:
Ochanomizu shobø.
–––– 1999. ‘Sengo nøsei no wakugumi to “shin kihon hø”.’ Nøgyø keizai kenky¨,
71(3).
Kajii Isoshi. 1993. ‘Sh¨raku nøjø sei no gen dankaiteki igi.’ In Ie to mura no
nøseigaku, ed. Nihon nøgyø kenky¨jo. Toyko: Nøsangyoson bunka kyøkai.
–––– 1999. Nøgyø køzø no henka to nøchi seido. Tokyo: Zenkoku nøgyø kaigisho.
Kurauchi Søichi. 1998. ‘Nøgyø køzø seisaku to tochi mondai.’ Nøgyø keizai kenky¨
70(2).
Mulhall, Stephen and Adam Swift. 1996. Liberals and Communitarians. 2nd edn.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Nishida Yoshiaki. 1998a. ‘Nøchi kaikaku to nøson minshushugi.’ In Demokurashii
no høkai to saisei, ed. Minami Ryøshin, Nakamura Masanori and Nishizawa
Tamotsu. Tokyo: Nihon keizai hyøronsha.
–––– 1998b. ‘Sengo kaikaku to nøson minshushugi.’ In 20 seiki shisutemu,
vol. 5, ed. Tøkyø daigaku shakai kagaku kenky¨jo. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku shup-
pankai.
Nøchi kaikaku kiroku iinkai. 1951. Nøchi kaikaku tenmatsu gaiyø. Tokyo: Nøsei
chøsakai.
Nøchi kaikaku shiryø hensan iinkai. 1975. Nøchi kaikaku shiryø sh¨sei, vol. 3.
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–––– 1980. Nøchi kaikaku shiryø sh¨sei, vol. 12. Tokyo: Nøsei chøsakai.
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1111 Saitø Hitoshi. 1974. Tochi seisaku ron no mondai ten – kosaku søgi o ch¨shin to
2111 shite.’ Ajia shokoku ni okeru tochi seisaku. Tokyo: Ajia keizai kenky¨jo.
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5111 nøyøchi y¨kø riyø høsakutø ni kansuru chøsa kenky¨ jigyø høkokusho. Tokyo:
Nøsei chøsakai.
6
Tanaka Manabu. 1987. ‘Nihon ni okeru jisakunøshugi no keifu.’ In Tønan Ajia no
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nøgyø gijutsu henkaku to nøson shakai, ed. Takiqawa Tsutomu. Tokyo: Ajia
8 keizai kenky¨jo.
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1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
2
3
4
5111
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7
8
9
30111
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2
3
4
5
6
7
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9
40111
1
2111
11 Agricultural public works
and the changing mentality
of Japanese farmers in the
postwar era
Kase Kazutoshi

Introduction
Publicly financed civil engineering projects occupy a larger share of GDP
in Japan than in other developed countries, leading some critics to describe
Japan as a ‘state dominated by construction companies’ (doken kokka).
That the share of public works projects related to agriculture has remained
high while the share of agriculture in the national economy has declined
precipitously has been a particular target of criticism in recent decades.
Until the 1970s, however, the importance of such public works projects
was widely acknowledged, not only by farmers, but also by the general
public.
In paddy field agriculture, unlike in other types of agriculture, both
the stabilization of output and increases in output are highly dependent
on improvements to irrigation and drainage, land readjustment, and other
civil engineering projects. The rapid increases in the productivity of paddy
fields and in the productivity of agricultural labor in the postwar era
would have been impossible without agricultural public works. During
the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese farmers were enthusiastic about engi-
neering projects and paid what was often a substantial portion of the costs
themselves, although rising rice prices and inflation eased the burden of
repayment. In these years farmers were keen to achieve higher incomes
and relief from arduous labor, and they saw agricultural engineering
projects as a vital means toward these goals.
Since the 1970s, however, farmers’ attitudes toward engineering
projects have become more diverse, as rice prices have stagnated due to
falling demand and the need to switch to other crops has become apparent.
This in turn has complicated relations among farmers within the same
rural community. Those who cultivate relatively large holdings and have
children willing to succeed them have aimed at expanding their scale of
cultivation, made possible by the increasing efficiency of agricultural
 Postwar agricultural public works 245
1111 labor, and have remained enthusiastic about engineering projects, but
2111 those who cultivate small holdings and have no successors have tended
3 to be reluctant to put up the money required. In addition, those who are
4 thinking of selling their farmland for housing or other non-agricultural
5111 purposes at some point in the future tend to base their decision to accept
6 a proposed project or not on whether it will facilitate or hinder later sales,
7 and whether or not it will increase the value of the land.
8 Because agricultural public works projects apply to all the agricultural
9 land within a specific area, it is essential that all the farmers concerned
1011 agree to the proposed project, or that those who are against it can be
1 constrained into participation. Legally, there are mechanisms for com-
2 pelling participation in cases where opponents are few in number, but it
3111 has always been clear that resort to compulsory measures would have a
4 damaging effect on relations among the farmers within a given commu-
5 nity. Hence, achieving unanimous support within the community was
6 viewed as essential, and it was expected that farmers who were enthusi-
7 astic about a proposed project would join with local officials and officials
8 of the land improvement district to persuade those among their neigh-
9 bors who were opposed or reluctant to consent to it.
20111 Since the 1990s, the prices Japanese farmers have received for the rice
1 they produce have fallen sharply, as the rice imports agreed at the GATT
2 Uruguay Round began and as the price support system in effect hitherto
3 could no longer provide them with the equivalent of urban wages for the
4 hours they worked. In terms of their profits from farming alone, farmers
5111 were no longer able to shoulder their share of the cost of engineering
6 works. State appropriations for rural public works projects increased at
7 this time, partly as a means of countering the disruptive effects of the
8 Uruguay Round in rural Japan and partly as a general response to the
9 deep recession afflicting the Japanese economy as a whole. Faced with
30111 the necessity of spending the funding that had been allocated to their
1 region, local authorities became increasingly concerned about achieving
2 the necessary consensus among farmers on which public works projects
3 depended.
4 In this chapter I will take a closer look at agricultural public works,
5 with particular attention to the impact of changes in farmers’ attitudes
6 toward farm management and agricultural investment throughout the
7 postwar era on the kind of projects proposed and implemented.
8
9
About agricultural public works in general
40111
1 Two sorts of agricultural public works can be identified: (1) those designed
2111 to create new agricultural land by means of drainage and reclamation;
246 Kase Kazutoshi
and (2) those designed to improve existing agricultural land. Projects of
the former sort were actively pursued immediately after Japan’s defeat
in 1945, a time of the severe food shortages, but it is projects of the latter
sort that predominated thereafter. Moreover, the primary focus has been
on paddy fields, where rice is grown, and projects aimed at improving
dry fields (hatake) and pasture land have been of secondary importance.
Paddy field improvements can be divided into the following categories:
(1) irrigation and drainage works to improve the water supply throughout
a given area; (2) projects to improve the fields in a given area, such as
land readjustment, bringing in topsoil, the construction of culverts for
drainage, and so on; and (3) projects to improve farm roads.
Irrigation and drainage works are the key projects that improve the
fundamental conditions for growing rice in the area. In order to secure
water for paddy field agriculture, rainwater alone is not enough. Water
has to be taken from rivers and reservoirs to fill the paddies before the
rice seedlings are transplanted, and the proper depth of water must be
maintained for most of the time that the rice is growing. Accordingly,
each paddy field has to be connected to a channel that draws water from
a river or other source, and the soil within it has to be level. It is also
essential to be able to drain water from the paddy fields after heavy rain-
fall, when the roots of the plants need exposure to air and at harvest time.
In the days when only very simple civil engineering projects were
possible, rice could only be cultivated on land immediately adjacent to
rivers. Not only was the labor involved in growing rice more arduous
and crop yields far lower than at present, but also the area of land that
could be utilized as paddy was limited by available technology. Moreover,
there was considerable variation in yields among local paddy fields,
because those in low-lying positions received too much water and those
at higher elevations received too little. Irrigation and drainage works over-
come this kind of situation, providing all land within a given area with
uniformly favorable water supply conditions. Embankments are built to
prevent flooding, pumps are installed to draw water from the river to any
paddy field in the area, and channels connecting each field are dug to
drain water back into the river as and when necessary.
The second type of public works for paddy fields are those that improve
the conditions of individual fields. For example, when the mechanization
of farming really got under way in about the 1960s, the floor of each
paddy field had to be strengthened before any machinery could be used
– if a piece of machinery is put into a muddy paddy field with a weak
floor it will sink due to its weight alone. Moreover, in order to make the
operation of the machinery more efficient, it was essential to make the
shape of each field into as large a rectangle as possible. To that end, large
 Postwar agricultural public works 247
1111
2111
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111 Figure 11.1 Effects of land adjustment.
1 Source: redrawn from Fukushima ken nøgyøshi hensan iinkai, ed., Fukushima ken nøgyøshi,
2 vol. 3 (1985), p. 1,273.
3
4 numbers of farmers took part in land readjustment projects, which
5111 involved exchanging the various small paddy fields they owned with
6 others to create one contiguous holding and then straightening the bound-
7 aries.
8 The third type of agricultural public works are the farm road improve-
9 ment works that have widened, straightened and paved the narrow and
30111 winding farm roads so as to make the passage of farm machinery (from
1 the second half of the 1950s) and cars (from the second half of the 1960s)
2 possible. As a result of this, the transportation time for moving farming
3 equipment and bringing in the harvest has been greatly shortened, and
4 labor much reduced. Figure 11.1 illustrates the effects of the second and
5 third type of agricultural public works.
6
7
Agricultural public works up to the early 1950s
8
9 The scale of agricultural public works that had been carried out during
40111 the decades prior to the Second World War had been limited, in part
1 because of technological constraints and in part because of conflicts of
2111 interest among the parties concerned, which impeded both the planning
248 Kase Kazutoshi
and execution of improvement projects. Those conflicts of interest had
been of the following two sorts: between colonial and domestic agricul-
ture and between landlords and tenant farmers in Japan.
The Japanese government had encouraged improvements to rice culti-
vation in Taiwan and Korea, not only as a means of promoting economic
development in those two colonies, but also as a means of providing
the cheap food imports that would keep industrial wages in Japan low,
thus strengthening the competitive position of Japanese manufactured
goods in international trade. Given that much greater increases in output
could be secured for the same outlay in the colonies than at home, there
was a marked tendency to concentrate the limited state funding that was
made available on agricultural public works in the colonies, and insuffi-
cient funding was provided domestically. Japanese farmers thus found
they had to shoulder more than half the cost of any projects undertaken,
and with the slump in rice prices in the 1920s and 1930s they saw little
chance of realizing any profit even if the money required could be scraped
together. As a result, the pace of agricultural public works projects
was slowed.
The second factor slowing land improvement projects was conflict of
interest between landlords and tenant farmers. More than half of all rice
paddy was cultivated by tenants in the prewar period – in 1930 only 46.3
percent of paddy fields were cultivated by owner-farmers – and the
increasing number of disputes over rent levels between tenants and their
landlords proved an obstacle to agricultural public works. It was the
owners of land, not the cultivators, who agreed to improvement projects
and assumed responsibility for their share of the costs. What landlords
sought from such projects was a net increase in the rents they received,
either by stabilizing yields so they need not grant rent reductions when
crops were poor or by increasing yields so they could demand higher
rents. If that proved impossible they saw little point in bearing the costs
involved. As tenant farmers became organized after the First World War
and as tenancy disputes increased in number, raising the rent after the
completion of improvement works became difficult to achieve. As a result,
from the 1920s on hardly any progress in agricultural public works was
possible at all in western Japan where the tenant movement was strongest,
and they came to be carried out primarily in the Tohoku region where
disputes organized by tenant unions remained relatively uncommon.
During the Second World War the import of rice from the colonies
became difficult, and in response to growing food shortages within
Japan attention focused on agricultural public works that would bring
about higher rice yields at home. Tenant rents were controlled, on the
basis that, if the actual cultivators of rice were not given a measure of
 Postwar agricultural public works 249
1111 protection, they would have no incentive to increase yields, and conse-
2111 quently the stalemate in agricultural land improvement due to the conflict
3 between landlords and tenant farmers eased. In 1941 the Agricultural
4 Land Development Act came into force and government subsidies were
5111 greatly increased. Because of severe shortages of raw materials and labor,
6 however, the majority of projects were stymied early on and would only
7 be completed after the war.
8 When Japan surrendered in August 1945, rice from the former colonies
9 could no longer be imported at all, and that reality combined with short-
1011 ages of fertilizer and farm implements made the food crisis even more
1 severe than during the war itself. There was widespread malnutrition
2 among urban residents until the autumn of 1948, and as the government
3111 was unable to fulfill its responsibilities for the rationing of food, people
4 who were unable to purchase food at black market prices were on the
5 verge of starvation. Accordingly, increasing the area of agricultural land
6 and raising the productivity of existing land became urgent priorities. In
7 addition, a fair proportion of people who had lost their jobs due to the
8 dissolution of war-related industries at the end of the war returned to
9 farming, while those second and third sons of farming families who could
20111 not get jobs in other industries sought out new agricultural land.
1 In these extreme conditions, policies towards agricultural land improve-
2 ment works were strengthened, and two particular sets of circumstances
3 had a favorable effect on the development of projects immediately there-
4 after. First, the conditions that had limited agricultural land improvement
5111 works before the war were eliminated, owing to the loss of the colonies
6 and the virtual extinction of the landlord class as a result of the postwar
7 land reform, and, second, in view of the food crisis, a considerable propor-
8 tion of spending on public works was concentrated on agriculture.
9 As a result, many of the works that had been planned during the war
30111 but that could not be carried out because of shortages of raw materials
1 and labor were executed in a short space of time. ‘Urgent land reclama-
2 tion works’ to create new arable land were given priority, as it was felt
3 they would have a greater immediate impact than improvements to
4 existing land and would make the best use of such raw materials as were
5 available. Most projects were relatively small in scale.
6 In addition, the Land Improvement Act in 1949 became the basic law
7 for postwar agricultural land improvement works. Under its provisions,
8 the separate irrigation associations and land improvement associations
9 that had existed in the past were unified into one body to oversee improve-
40111 ments at the local level. The law also effected a change in the locus
1 of decision making about agricultural land improvement works from
2111 the prewar ‘landowner principle’ to the ‘cultivator principle,’ so that in
250 Kase Kazutoshi
instances of proposed improvements that involved any fields remaining
in tenancy only the tenant farmers as the actual cultivators were empow-
ered to decide whether or not to participate.
To sum up, relatively little in the way of improvements was actually
achieved during the early post-surrender years, but some very crucial
groundwork was laid for the development of agricultural land improve-
ments in the future.

The 1950s and 1960s

The food shortages and economic chaos that beset Japan after 1945 finally
came to an end in the early 1950s, and from 1955 to the early 1970s the
Japanese economy grew rapidly, with GDP increasing at an annual rate
of about 10 percent and non-agricultural job opportunities expanding
dramatically. The younger members of farm households, whether those
who had returned to the countryside at the end of the war or those who
had just completed the now mandatory nine years of compulsory educa-
tion, increasingly found employment in industry and commerce, and the
surplus population within farming villages soon began to disappear.
While the wages paid to non-agricultural workers increased, farm
incomes remained relatively stable. To resolve what came to be seen as
a serious problem, the Agricultural Basic Law was enacted in 1961, and
a new policy for determining how much farmers would be paid by the
state for the rice they produced was implemented. Not only would their
actual costs of production each year be taken into consideration, but so
too would prevailing wages for industrial workers, and farmers would
receive a roughly equivalent ‘wage’ for the hours they had worked. The
state would then sell the rice to the public at a lower price, absorbing
the cost of doing so. Table 11.1 shows the changes in state rice prices
over time, revealing stable price levels during the latter 1950s and rapid
increases between 1960 and 1968.
At roughly the same time, the prices of easy-to-use agricultural
machinery produced by the expanding machinery industry fell to levels
that ordinary farmers could afford, and their greater use of machinery,
combined with their greater use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and
improved rice strains, led to higher yields for less labor. As Table 11.1
also shows, the average yield of rice on 0.1 hectare of paddy rose dramatic-
ally from about 300 kg in the early 1950s to some 450 kg in the late
1960s. Table 11.2 indicates that the labor required per 0.1 hectare to grow
rice declined from 199 hours in 1950 to 116 hours in 1970, a decrease
of some 42 percent, for a farmer with a holding of from one to 1.5
hectares. Clearly, a considerable degree of change for the better – albeit
 Postwar agricultural public works 251
1111 Table 11.1 State purchase price for rice, 1950–99
2111
Year Price/60 Rice yield/ Year Price/60 Rice yield/
3 kg yen tan (kg) kg yen tan (kg)
4
5111 1950 2419 324 1975 15440 481
6 1951 2820 306 1976 16432 427
1952 3000 334 1977 17086 478
7 1953 3384 278 1978 17176 499
8 1954 3704 305 1979 17176 482
9 1955 3902 393 1980 17536 412
1011 1956 3788 345 1981 17603 453
1 1957 3898 362 1982 17797 458
1958 3880 377 1983 18112 459
2
1959 3886 388 1984 18505 517
3111 1960 3902 398 1985 18505 501
4 1961 4129 384 1986 18505 508
5 1962 4562 404 1987 17404 498
6 1963 5030 397 1988 16615 474
7 1964 5772 396 1989 16615 496
1965 6228 390 1990 16372 509
8 1966 6936 400 1991 16266 473
9 1967 7592 453 1992 16266 504
20111 1968 8088 449 1993 16266 367
1 1969 8090 435 1994 16266 544
2 1970 8152 442 1995 16266 509
1971 8482 411 1996 16266 525
3 1972 8880 456 1997 16092 515
4 1973 10218 470 1998 15741 499
5111 1974 13491 456 1999 15500 515
6
Sources: Kayø Nobufumi, Nihon nøgyø kiso tøkei; Shokuryø-chø, Shokuryø kanri tøkei nenpø.
7
Note
8 The purchase prices listed are for third-class, unhulled rice.
9
30111
1 within the confines of small-scale family farming – was occurring in the
2 lives and livelihoods of farmers.
3 In 1952 the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry announced a ‘Five-
4 year Plan to Increase Food Production,’ which aimed at the achievement
5 of self-sufficiency in food by 1960. This plan was later revised, but until
6 the mid-1960s efforts to increase the production of rice and other agri-
7 cultural products received official encouragement.
8 There was a gradual reduction in the land reclamation projects that
9 had been emphasized immediately after the war, in part because suitable
40111 land was now harder to find, and attention focused in the 1950s on the
1 improvement of existing fields. After 1963, the main emphasis shifted
2111 from irrigation and drainage works to the readjustment of individual paddy
252 Kase Kazutoshi
Table 11.2 Hours of labor per 0.1 hectare to grow rice, by scale of cultivation

Scale of cultivation (ha)

Year Average <0.5 0.5–1.0 1.0–1.5 1.5–2.0 2.0–3.0 3.0–5.0 5.0+
1950 250.0 185.6 199.0 187.9 178.8 165.1
1956 183.2 209.6 193.8 180.8 166.9 162.9 141.4
1960 172.7 193.6 182.8 172.7 165.3 155.2 144.1
1965 141.2 156.2 148.5 138.5 138.4 130.9 117.0
1970 117.8 141.6 129.5 115.8 111.9 102.6 88.8
1975 81.5 107.8 94.6 82.7 70.0 65.9 55.4
1980 64.4 81.7 70.5 62.0 54.1 52.8 49.3 31.8
1985 55.1 72.7 63.3 52.9 47.5 44.9 44.4 32.1
1990 43.8 57.7 51.0 43.8 40.4 37.3 35.4 26.7
1995 39.1 57.6 46.7 40.5 35.2 33.1 30.1 23.5
1998 36.1 53.0 42.9 36.7 32.8 30.8 28.0 21.3
Sources: Kayø Nobufumi, Nihon nøgyø kiso tøkei (revised ed.), pp. 488–9; Nørinshø tøkei
jøhøbu, Kome oyobi mugirui no seisanhi, relevant years.

fields. At the same time the main effect of projects changed from increased
productivity per unit area to savings in labor.
In the early 1950s the standard size of paddy field created by read-
justment was the one-tan plot (1,000 sq.m., in a rectangle 25 m by 40 m),
but gradually the standard area was increased to two tan (2,000 sq.m., in
other words 25 m by 80 m), and after 1963 a three-tan plot (3,000 sq.m.,
30 m by 100 m) was recommended. Central government subsidies were
provided to promote such works, amounting to 45 to 50 percent of the
total cost after 1965. In addition, it was standard practice for prefectures
to provide 30 percent, leaving farmers responsible for no more than 20 to
25 percent (or even less if the municipalities in which they lived were will-
ing and able to contribute toward the cost). Not only did such readjust-
ment projects begin changing the rural landscape by providing expanses
of uniformly rectangular paddy fields, but also – and of more immediate
importance – they made possible the use of machinery: the cultivators and
small tractors that spread rapidly from the late 1950s to the early 1960s,
and the harvesters (at first binders, then combine harvesters) that became
available in the late 1960s.
It was of vital importance to the success of the policies implemented
at this time that all farmers supported land improvement. That in itself
made it relatively easy to overcome any reluctance some of them might
feel at parting with bits of what had previously been ‘their land’ and to
negotiate the land transfers to create unified parcels of suitable size.
Village officials and officials of the local land improvement district sought
 Postwar agricultural public works 253
1111 the required consent of all farmers in the proposed project area, and if
2111 any problems arose over land transfers it was usually possible to resolve
3 them fairly swiftly by calling for compromise, so that ‘a project that
4 everyone wants can be realized as soon as possible.’ At a time when the
5111 benefits of land readjustment were easily appreciated by one and all, such
6 arguments usually proved persuasive.
7 Moreover, at a time when further inflation and further increases in rice
8 prices were to be expected, the real burden on farmers of their share of
9 land improvement costs lightened every year, and farmers tended to think
1011 that the sooner the works were carried out the greater their profits would
1 be. Consequently, in cases where government subsidies were not granted
2 to projects, it was not unusual for the works to be carried out immedi-
3111 ately with no subsidy (in other words, with the farmers themselves bearing
4 the full cost). Rather than postpone the works in order to apply for subsidy
5 again the following year, farmers believed they could quickly repay any
6 loans taken out to pay the costs involved.
7 Of course, the enthusiasm among farmers for agricultural public works
8 was greatest in those parts of the country where the greatest effects could
9 be expected. That many projects were carried out in the Tohoku and
20111 Hokuriku regions and relatively few were carried out in western Japan
1 was because yields per tan had long been low in the former regions on
2 account of the harsh winter weather and the poverty of local farmers, and
3 improvement projects promised to increase yields significantly. This was
4 indeed to be the case. By the late 1950s rice yields per tan in the prefec-
5111 tures of the Tohoku and Hokuriku regions had increased to well above
6 the national average, and as a result of further increases in the 1960s
7 these prefectures became the chief rice-producing districts of the country.
8 Farmers there, and in the northern Kanto region, ‘were busy converting
9 every possible plot of flat land into rice paddy’ in what were known as
30111 ‘self-funded paddy conversions’ ( jiko kaiden) (Baba 1975: 259). In
1 parallel with those ‘self-funded paddy conversions’ and other land recla-
2 mation projects, projects to improve existing agricultural land were also
3 carried out.
4 The fifth column of Table 11.3 shows the percentage of paddy fields
5 on which land readjustment works had been completed by 1963. The
6 national average stood at 27 percent, but the two regions of Hokuriku
7 and Tohoku had considerably higher rates of 47 percent and 44 percent
8 respectively. It can also be seen that the Kinki and Chugoku regions in
9 western Japan were well below the national average, while Hokkaido had
40111 the lowest percentage of all.
1 As we shall see in the next section, the prospect of converting agri-
2111 cultural land to such other uses as housing sites would impede agricultural
Table 11.3 Percentage of adjusted rice paddy fields by agricultural region, 1963 and 1993 (1,000 ha, %)

August 1963 March 1993

Total Adjusted fields Total Adjusted to 0.3 ha or larger
area area
of Area Area adjusted to Adjusted Adjusted to of Area Adjusted
paddy 0.2 ha or more (%) 0.2 ha or more paddy (%)
(a) (b) (c) (b/a) (c/a) (d) (e) (e/d)
Japan 3428 912 83 27 2 2782 1424 51

Hokkaido 237 15 2 6 1 241 215 89

Tohoku 647 283 13 44 2 664 329 50

Kanto 626 189 12 30 2 505 258 51

Hokuriku 403 190 22 47 5 313 161 51

Tokai 239 62 9 26 4 156 83 53

Kinki 318 39 2 12 1 206 94 45

Chugoku, Shikoku 496 46 12 9 2 333 107 32

Kyushu 462 87 11 19 2 363 176 49

Sources: Poketto nørinsuisan tøkei (1977); Nørinshø nøchi kyoku, Tochi kairyø søgø keikaku chøsa høkoku (1967), p. 67.
 Postwar agricultural public works 255
1111 public works from the 1970s on, but during the 1960s that was not the
2111 case. On the contrary, the very creation of large, level, uniformly rectan-
3 gular plots was viewed as a plus by those farmers who were contemplating
4 sales of their property for non-agricultural use as well as by those who
5111 intended to continue farming, and until 1969 virtually no legal restric-
6 tions existed on such sales. Indeed, farmers who owned land near
7 rapidly expanding cities could expect to recoup far more than they had
8 been required to invest in land readjustment from the higher prices such
9 readjusted land would fetch from developers.
1011
1
The 1970s and 1980s: an era of change in agricultural
2
public works
3111
4 The favorable conditions for rice farming in the 1960s were at the same
5 time preparing the ground for the subsequent deadlock in Japanese agri-
6 culture. The first problem to surface was an excess in the supply of rice
7 over demand. Spurred on by annual increases in the price they received
8 for rice, farmers made continued efforts to increase yields per tan, but at
9 the very same time the dietary preferences of urban consumers had been
20111 shifting away from rice to bread as part of the westernization of lifestyles
1 during the years of rapid economic growth. Annual rice consumption per
2 capita reached a peak of 118 kg in 1962 and then swiftly fell to 93 kg
3 in 1971, a decrease of over 21 percent in just nine years. By the late
4 1960s the Food Control Account was in serious deficit, because projected
5111 revenue from sales of rice to consumers (at lower prices than producers
6 received) was significantly less than anticipated. From 1968 efforts began
7 to curtail increases in the producers’ rice price, and in 1970 the first rice
8 production controls (gentan, or set-aside policies) went into operation.
9 A second problem was that as Japan entered the ranks of the econom-
30111 ically advanced nations it encountered demands for the abolition of trade
1 restrictions from its first-world trading partners, including demands for
2 the ending of restrictions on the import of certain agricultural commodi-
3 ties. While, on the one hand, new policies to discourage rice production
4 envisaged that farmers would be induced to switch to growing vegeta-
5 bles, fruit and livestock, on the other hand, with increasing imports of
6 foreign agricultural commodities that had been produced far more cheaply
7 than was the case in Japan, domestic prices for those commodities fell,
8 and so many of the crops seen as alternatives to rice became unprofitable
9 to grow.
40111 The third problem stemmed from changes within rice farming itself.
1 When mechanization even of rice planting became feasible in 1975 or
2111 thereabouts, almost the entire process of growing rice became freed from
256 Kase Kazutoshi
time-consuming hand labor. Consequently, even someone with a full-time
job in the non-agricultural sector now found it possible to grow rice, and
the number of type 2 part-time farmers (those earning more from non-
agricultural employment than from agriculture) increased dramatically.
As car ownership had become more widespread in rural Japan than in
cities by the early 1970s, farm household members were able to contem-
plate even longer daily journeys to their non-agricultural jobs, and at the
same time an increasing number of factories were relocating to the coun-
tryside in response to efforts to reduce pollution in cities, creating a
substantial increase in non-agricultural employment opportunities rela-
tively close to hand. The interest of type 2 part-time farmers in farming
was relatively weak; they were considerably less keen than full-time
farmers to pay their share of local agricultural public works projects, and
they tended to be more interested than their full-time farming neighbors
in the possibility of selling their land holdings. After 1969, when a law
came into effect imposing severe restrictions on the subsequent change
in use of any land in designated agricultural promotion districts that had
received a state subsidy for public works, they were likely to oppose
proposals for such projects on the grounds that future sales of land would
be impeded.
With rice now in over-supply, the nature of agricultural public works
projects underwent marked changes. First, the number of projects to create
new paddy fields was reduced, and the improvement of existing arable
land took center stage. In that regard, emphasis was now placed on the
conversion of paddy fields into dry fields (for example, improving the
drainage of paddy fields so they could be used as dry fields too) and on
projects to improve dry fields themselves.
Second, agricultural public works were rescheduled as part of attempts
to reduce rice production. Previously it had been standard practice to
begin works in the autumn after harvesting was over and to finish the
works by rice-planting time the following year so as not to interfere in
any way with the rice crop. Now works during the summer months were
encouraged, first by means of set-aside subsidies (ky¨kø shørei hojokin)
from 1970 and then by year-round works subsidies (sh¨nen sekø hojokin)
from 1974. Within a very short space of time, many projects were being
carried out on the latter basis.
Third, there was an increase in ‘re-improvement’ projects on paddy
fields that had been improved previously. With the introduction of large
rice-planting machines and the increased size of other machines used in
rice production, farmers found it desirable to increase the size of the 0.1
or 0.2 hectare plots that had been created during the 1960s. Moreover,
in cases where part-time farmers had entrusted the cultivation of the paddy
 Postwar agricultural public works 257
1111 fields they owned to other full-time farmers, or to a producers’ organi-
2111 zation, it was essential that the farmers looking after the fields were able
3 to make efficient use of mechanical equipment. Hence, in order to even
4 out the differences in elevation between adjacent small-scale paddy fields
5111 and combine them into one large paddy field, further readjustment was
6 necessary.
7 Fourth, projects to provide farmers with independent access to water
8 were undertaken for the first time. Previously, it had been necessary for
9 all the farmers in a given area to coordinate the flooding of the paddy
1011 fields they cultivated, but with the increase in part-time farming this sort
1 of coordination became difficult and independent access to water became
2 necessary. Works to supply water to individual fields were carried out,
3111 and piped water came into general use with separate taps being installed
4 in each field.
5 Fifth, the scope of agricultural public works projects was expanded
6 from the early 1970s to include purposes other than increasing agricul-
7 tural output. Road construction and the laying of sewers in villages can
8 be cited as examples of projects that benefited all rural residents, not just
9 farmers alone. Although such projects were carried out by the Ministry
20111 of Construction in urban areas, they were carried out by the Ministry of
1 Agriculture and Forestry in the Japanese countryside, so as to maintain
2 that ministry’s share of public works appropriations at a time when farmers
3 were increasingly divided over the value of purely agricultural public
4 works.
5111 As shown in Table 11.4, the charges farmers had to pay for land
6 improvement works and irrigation rose from the equivalent of about 2
7 percent of their gross income from rice cultivation in the mid-1960s to
8 8 percent in the late 1980s, and from about 3 percent of their cash income
9 from rice to about 9 percent during the same period. In terms of net
30111 income, generally estimated at about half of gross income, the burden of
1 charges rose from 4 percent to 16 percent.
2 The above are average figures. As shown in Table 11.5 the actual
3 burden varied inversely with size of holding. That is, the smaller the
4 holding, the higher the percentage of land improvement charges to gross
5 income. This would lead us to expect that enthusiasm for land improve-
6 ments would vary according to size of holding. On the one hand,
7 small-scale farmers – among whom the vast majority farmed only part-
8 time – would be reluctant to pay for works, and on the other hand,
9 large-scale farmers would be enthusiastic about them, especially if the
40111 works enabled them to use machinery more effectively. In this way, differ-
1 ences in the scale of operation among farmers in any locality and their
2111 differing approaches to rice farming would produce differing stances
258 Kase Kazutoshi
Table 11.4 Agricultural income and the cost of land improvement works to
farmers, 1965–98 (national averages, 1,000 yen)

Gross agricultural income Cost c/a c/b

of (%) (%)
Total From rice only works
Total Cash
(a) (b) (c)
1965 639 274 188 5.6 2.04 2.98
1966 726 308 217 6.2 2.01 2.86
1967 870 380 283 7.8 2.05 2.76
1968 926 406 302 8.8 2.17 2.91
1969 969 402 306 10.2 2.54 3.33
1970 985 374 280 10.9 2.91 3.89
1971 961 335 245 12.1 3.61 4.94
1972 1128 388 297 13.6 3.51 4.58
1973 1411 463 357 15.2 3.28 4.26
1974 1777 652 511 17.7 2.71 3.46
1975 2081 784 634 21.1 2.69 3.33
1976 2214 772 624 23.9 3.10 3.83
1977 2332 891 737 26.9 3.02 3.65
1978 2399 857 742 28.9 3.37 3.89
1979 2447 820 685 32.7 3.99 4.77
1980 2421 706 576 33.4 4.73 5.80
1981 2552 771 632 37.9 4.92 6.00
1982 2576 788 654 42.0 5.33 6.42
1983 2691 803 669 43.5 5.42 6.50
1984 2857 957 813 47.9 5.01 5.89
1985 2897 942 808 50.5 5.36 6.25
1986 2817 964 832 58.4 6.06 7.02
1987 2658 846 732 58.2 6.88 7.95
1988 2678 791 688 63.0 7.96 9.16
1989 2872 846 739 67.2 7.94 9.09
1990 3002 848 748 67.2 7.92 8.98
1991 3012 798 701 68.4 8.57 9.76
1992 3796 1137 1023 88.2 7.76 8.62
1993 3671 965 868 89.6 9.28 10.32
1994 4025 1355 1234 96.5 7.12 7.82
1995 3791 1136 1029 90.9 8.00 8.83
1996 3801 1113 1014 87.1 7.83 8.59
1997 3642 987 892 84.9 8.60 9.52
1998 3705 986 899 84.8 8.60 9.43

Source: Nørinshø tøkei jøhøbu, Nøka keizai chøsa (relevant years).

Notes
1 ‘Cost of works’ includes cost of land improvement and irrigation maintenance expenses.
2 From 1992 on, the data are for ‘commercial farmers’ (hanbai nøka) only, currently defined
as those who farm at least 30 ares of land or sell at least 500,000 yen in farm produce
annually.
 Postwar agricultural public works 259
1111 Table 11.5 Cost of land improvement works and irrigation maintenance expenses
2111 to farmers by their scale of cultivation (excluding Hokkaido) (1,000
yen)
3
4 Gross agricultural Cost of b/a
5111 income works
6
Total* Rice only*
7 (a) (b) (%)
8
9 All farmers 1965 830 340 7.0 2.06
1011 676 242 7.0 2.89
1975 1971 747 19.1 2.56
1 1729 595 19.1 3.21
2 1985 2694 905 47.6 5.26
3111 2465 769 47.6 6.19
4 0.1–0.5ha 1965 643 68 1.1 1.62
5 550 24 1.1 4.58
6 1975 569 240 5.4 2.25
419 128 5.4 4.22
7 1985 684 267 14.7 5.51
8 528 162 14.7 9.07
9 0.5–1ha 1965 553 207 3.5 1.69
20111 423 120 3.5 2.92
1 1975 1730 564 12.4 2.20
2 1503 410 12.4 3.02
1985 1839 648 34.3 5.29
3 1640 516 34.3 6.65
4 1–1.5ha 1965 893 343 7.4 2.16
5111 729 241 7.4 3.07
6 1975 2922 941 25.0 2.66
7 2615 758 25.0 3.30
8 1985 3293 1052 56.4 5.36
3048 900 56.4 6.27
9
1.5–2ha 1965 1141 510 10.4 2.04
30111 952 394 10.4 2.64
1 1975 3698 1451 42.5 2.93
2 3347 1254 42.5 3.39
3 1985 4869 1529 76.9 5.03
4 4578 1360 76.9 5.65
5 2ha+ 1965 1495 854 20.6 2.41
1270 716 20.6 2.88
6 1975 5414 2491 67.3 2.70
7 4955 2273 67.3 2.96
8 1985 8138 2709 141.8 5.23
9 7697 2525 141.8 5.62
40111 Source: Nørinshø tøkei jøhøbu, Nøka keizai chøsa (relevant years).
1 Note
2111 * The top figure for each year is total gross income; the bottom figure is cash income only.
260 Kase Kazutoshi
toward any agricultural public works proposed. Instead of easily achieved
consensus as in the 1960s, there would be conflict.
An example from the village of Shiranegø in Niigata Prefecture illus-
trates the divisions that did in fact materialize. When a proposal was put
forward to ‘re-improve’ local rice paddies by enlarging them from 0.1
hectare to 0.3 hectare each, the responses of farmers were as follows:
large-scale farmers enthusiastically supported the proposal, medium-sized
farmers agreed with reservations, and small-scale farmers not only
expressed opposition but also formed a group to campaign against the
proposal. According to the authors of a study of this case:

Those cultivating small holdings were entirely satisfied with the

existing 0.1 hectare plots and as they saw no personal benefit in
further enlargement, they saw no point in further investment. Given
that they viewed [the proposal] as a waste of their money, it was
only natural that they opposed it. Those who agreed with reserva-
tions did not like the prospect that their existing machinery would
become redundant. This middling group farmed too little land to rely
on farming alone, nor could they afford new investment to continue
as part-time farmers. So they sought as many concessions as possible
from the land improvement district to reduce the financial burden on
them that [the proposed] paddy enlargement project would impose.
(Arita and Kimura 1997: 50)

In another case, farmers with large-scale holdings proposed lining all

earthen watercourses in the locality with concrete, but other farmers in
the community objected to the plan. At issue here was the fact that the
minority of large-scale farmers had to attend to the maintenance of the
existing watercourses on their own – weeding the earthen channels,
dredging work, and so on – because the majority of farmers had jobs in
the non-agricultural sector and could not get time off to help. Concreting
the channels would have eliminated what the large-scale farmers saw as
unfair burden-sharing, but the small-scale farmers objected to the costs
of the work and rejected the proposal.
In order to secure the necessary consent from the many part-time
farmers for projects that would promote more efficient large-scale
farming, bring about substantial increases in yields on poor-quality land
and/or produce substantial labor savings, local authorities and officials of
land improvement districts now resorted to one or more of the following
strategies.
First, methods were devised which resulted in no financial burden at
all being imposed on local farmers. For example, if as a result of land
 Postwar agricultural public works 261
1111 readjustment an additional parcel or two of land could be created for
2111 public use, the local authority could purchase that land and the proceeds
3 from the sale could be used to cover all the costs that farmers would
4 otherwise have been expected to pay. In districts close to expanding cities
5111 where land prices had escalated, the proceeds from such sales might even
6 be sufficient to provide each local farm household with a share of the
7 proceeds (Okabe 1997).
8 Second, it was possible to re-zone some of the land within the project
9 area so that subsequent changes in use were possible. This proved a useful
1011 means of obtaining the consent of those farmers who saw no economic
1 merit in the proposed project so far as their own farming operations were
2 concerned, but who were interested in the eventual sale of at least part
3111 of their holdings for housing or other non-agricultural development.
4 Third, in cases where some farmers found it difficult to find the time
5 to cultivate all of their holdings and were thinking of leasing or entrusting
6 part of their land to others, the municipality could intervene and with-
7 hold the necessary approval for such arrangements until agreement on
8 the consolidation and enlargement of paddies was secured.
9 Of course, older methods of persuasion would be used as well. Farmers
20111 were reminded that they could take out long-term loans to cover their
1 share of the expenses, and so the annual payments due would not be
2 large. Indeed, they would hardly notice the payments if they arranged to
3 make them by means of automatic transfers from their savings accounts
4 with the agricultural cooperative, and before they knew it the loan would
5111 be repaid. Another argument was that, if the proposed works were not
6 carried out, it would prove difficult to survive as a rice-producing district,
7 and local land values would decline. Appeals to the traditional spirit of
8 mutual assistance within the community were also made, stressing the
9 duty of other residents to come to the aid of those among them who
30111 suffered from poor conditions and were anxious to see improvements
1 carried out.
2 As for the actual process of securing agreement, it was usual for state
3 and prefectural staff involved in agricultural public works as well as offi-
4 cials of the local land improvement district to participate and for repeated
5 meetings with all the farmers in the community to be held. Once the
6 agreement of the majority of the farmers seemed assured, then efforts
7 were concentrated on persuading any hard-line opponents. Although it
8 was legally possible to carry out works on all fields, including those of
9 opponents, on the basis of a two-thirds majority in favor, and to levy
40111 charges on the dissenting farmers, in practice efforts continued to gain
1 well-nigh universal consent so as to avoid permanent damage to social
2111 relationships within the community. Opponents would be reminded of
262 Kase Kazutoshi
the provisions of the law and urged to reconsider on the grounds that
‘since the project is going to be carried out anyway, surely it will be
better to carry it out amicably.’
Usually, projects were authorized once the agreement of at least 95
percent of local farmers had been secured. That could take considerable
time, and as a general rule at least several years would pass from the
initial drafting of plans to the start of actual work. Cases requiring up to
20 years or more before work commenced were not that unusual. An
example which took well over a decade, and which finally went ahead
despite significant local opposition, is described below.
A public works project that had just been agreed in Nangø-chø, located
in a major rice-producing area of Miyagi Prefecture, was suspended
when the gentan policy to reduce rice production went into effect in 1970.
At that time, the municipality had distributed the following letter to
farmers:

The market for rice will continue to become ever more competitive,
and in order to survive as a rice-producing district, the improvement
of our fields is undoubtedly essential. Although there is agreement
on the general aim of these works, the burden on farmers will be
large and long-lasting, and many farmers have been uneasy about
the future direction of national agricultural policy. It was therefore
decided that it would be best to reconsider the project once that direc-
tion has been determined. . . . It is clear that opinions within the
municipality are divided. [Although] we have found many supporters
of the project among farmers in younger age groups and among those
who farm inferior land, there was [also] a lot of opposition to taking
on the considerable costs of the project at a time of uncertainty about
Japanese agricultural policy.
(Nangø-chø 1985: 1031)

Some years later the proposed works were again put forward for imple-
mentation, in part because of renewed campaigning by those local farmers
who had always supported the project and in part because of the desire
among local officials to promote Nangø as a leading center of rice produc-
tion. Despite the determined lobbying of farmers who objected to the
project, some of whom organized an ‘Alliance to Prevent the Proposed
Field Improvements,’ the project was finally approved as a prefectural
undertaking in 1982 and work commenced in 1983. Objecting to the high
costs involved, as had opponents of the project since 1970, some 46 out
of 379 local farmers (12 percent of the total) resisted all attempts at
persuasion and remained in opposition even as work began.
 Postwar agricultural public works 263
1111 The 1990s: agricultural public works at a time of crisis
2111 in Japanese agriculture
3
4 Under the agreements reached late in 1993 during the Uruguay Round of
5111 GATT negotiations, the Japanese government was to end price supports
6 for domestically produced rice and enforce a ‘minimum access’ system
7 for rice imports as of 1995. Rice prices fell dramatically, threatening the
8 viability of Japanese rice farming. Among those hardest hit were the very
9 farmers whom the Ministry of Agriculture had been trying for years to
1011 promote: those with large holdings, who could make the best use of
1 machinery to produce rice more cheaply. Still relatively few in number,
2 those farmers had been gradually expanding their scale of operations, pri-
3111 marily by taking on the cultivation of paddy fields owned by their elderly
4 neighbors. The steady aging of the many small-scale farmers in Japan,
5 most of whom lacked children willing or able to continue farming the fam-
6 ily’s land, was contributing to the achievement of efficient agriculture.
7 With the collapse of rice prices, however, the potential profitability even
8 of large-scale farming operations was thrown into doubt.
9 Not surprisingly, the deterioration in agricultural profits made small-
20111 scale farmers even less interested in agricultural public works than previ-
1 ously. Large-scale farmers, who were far more likely than the majority
2 to be full-time farmers without additional sources of income, now faced
3 a severe dilemma. Not a few abandoned their expanded operations at
4 this time, and lost interest in agricultural public works as a result.
5111 Some others sought to weather the storm by expanding their operations
6 even further. In particular, those who had borrowed heavily to finance
7 expansion by means of land purchases, or perhaps more commonly, by
8 purchases of machinery to farm leased land, found it necessary to con-
9 tinue expanding, if for no other reason than to generate the revenue from
30111 increased crop sales at lower prices that would enable them to service their
1 loans. But with rice prices down and prohibitions on growing rice under
2 the set-aside program now extending to 30–40 percent of all paddy fields,
3 not even they could see any point in land improvements.
4 Spending on public works of all sorts was expanded in Japan during
5 the 1990s as a means of counteracting the ongoing recession and, as a
6 result of competition among ministries for budgetary allocations, the share
7 of public works spending carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture
8 increased significantly. As shown in Table 11.6, that ministry had received
9 an annual allocation of about 0.9 trillion yen between 1980 and 1991,
40111 but its allocation rose to 1.76 trillion yen in 1994 and remained at the
1 level of about 1.5 trillion yen thereafter. Given that farmers both small
2111 and large were now considerably less interested in agricultural public
264 Kase Kazutoshi
Table 11.6 State spending on agricultural public works, 1967–98 (billion yen)

Total Land Farmland Land

improvements development reclamation
1967 121 86 21 13
1968 139 99 25 15
1969 162 116 29 13
1970 190 140 36 11
Development
projects in
designated
regions
1971 247 192 41 8
1972 316 251 50 8
1973 326 258 52 7
1974 356 281 52 11
1975 426 339 58 16
1976 468 371 64 20
1977 637 513 83 27
1978 775 625 105 31
1979 856 692 115 36
1980 913 746 116 34
1981 916 749 114 36
1982 904 739 111 37
1983 899 734 112 35
1984 893 729 111 34
1985 879 718 110 31
1986 889 738 112 31
1987 958 802 119 28
1988 854 703 116 31
1989 867 717 110 30
1990 867 720 108 30
Farmland Village Farmland
improvements improvements conservation
1991 909 611 197 90
1992 1239 705 410 112
1993 1657 839 673 146
1994 1760 821 769 158
1995 1618 853 570 173
1996 1597 817 606 162
1997 1533 774 585 161
1998 1459 738 545 163
Source: Økurashø shukei kyoku, Kessan setsumei, annual editions.
Note
Figures for total spending include administrative costs.
 Postwar agricultural public works 265
1111 works, much less in assuming any financial burden for their cost, new
2111 means had to be devised to secure the consent of local farmers to projects
3 so that spending to the level of appropriation could be achieved.
4 One such means was further reduction in the financial burden farmers
5111 would be expected to assume. This was achieved in some cases by
6 extending the period of the loans farmers took out to cover their share
7 of the costs so that their annual payments (although not their total indebt-
8 edness) would be less. In other cases, the charges would be halved from
9 20 to 10 percent if certain officially approved targets for the creation of
1011 larger fields and the expansion of large-scale farming in the area were
1 met.
2 Another means was to increase the number of projects that aimed at
3111 improving the daily life of rural residents. As is also shown in Table
4 11.6, Ministry of Agriculture spending on the now separately listed cate-
5 gory of ‘village improvements’ (nøson seibi) increased rapidly from 1991,
6 and in 1994 it constituted over 43 percent of the total spent on public
7 works in the agricultural sphere. Because it was difficult to get farmers
8 to agree to purely agricultural public works quickly enough, the Ministry
9 applied more of its funding to laying sewers and constructing roads in
20111 the countryside.
1
2
Conclusion
3
4 Hardly any raw data related to agricultural public works have been made
5111 public, and most of the statistics that have appeared have been organized
6 in a manner that prevents analysis of the precise nature and scale of
7 projects in any given region at any given time. As a result, no compre-
8 hensive assessment of the changes that have taken place in agricultural
9 public works during the postwar era is yet possible. However, by returning
30111 to Table 11.3, which compares ‘completed improvements’ to paddy fields
1 in 1963 and 1993, it is possible to grasp some of the most significant
2 changes that have occurred.
3 The first point to note is that there was a 19 percent decrease in the total
4 area of paddy fields, from 3.43 million hectares in 1963 to 2.78 million
5 hectares 30 years later. Only in Hokkaido and Tohoku did the area of
6 paddy fields increase somewhat. In all other regions there were marked
7 decreases, as paddy fields were converted to such other uses as housing
8 sites. Second, we can see that considerable progress was made during this
9 30-year period in improvements to paddy fields. As of 1963, only 27 per-
40111 cent of fields had been improved in any way, and only 2 percent had been
1 enlarged to the then standard 0.2 hectare size. By 1993, fully 51 percent
2111 of all fields had been enlarged to at least 0.3 hectare. The increase in
266 Kase Kazutoshi
Hokkaido, to 89 percent, was truly spectacular, especially as Hokkaido
had ranked lowest in the nation in improved land of any sort in 1963.
Clearly, efforts to promote paddy field improvements there had been vig-
orously pursued, and considerable increases in labor productivity had been
achieved. At the same time, however, the burden of loans that Hokkaido
rice farmers had taken out to finance their share of improvement works
had increased proportionately, and when rice prices plummeted in the
early 1990s, those among them who farmed the largest and most efficient
holdings in the region found themselves the most vulnerable to global-
ization. Burdened by debt and almost totally dependent on agricultural
income for their livelihoods, many of them were forced into bankruptcy
or into abandoning farming.
The fate of the supposedly fittest and most modern of Hokkaido farmers
set off alarm bells in rural communities throughout Japan, further inten-
sifying the uneasiness that had been brewing among farmers for years.
For the past half century or so, agricultural public works had effected
sweeping changes in the countryside, providing the infrastructure and
other improvements for rice cultivation that no individual farmer could
carry out to any meaningful degree entirely on his own. No doubt addi-
tional public works projects would be necessary in the future, especially
in creating even larger fields, and as in the past the costs would be substan-
tial. But the era in which farmers would happily bear the financial burden
which those projects imposed on them was now very definitely over.

References
Arita Hiroyuki and Kimura Kazuhiro. 1997. Jizokuteki nøgyø no tame no suiden
kukaku seiri. Tokyo: Nørin tøkei kyøkai.
Baba Akira. 1975. ‘Sengo tochi kairyø jigyø no tenkai.’ In Sangyø køzø henkakuka
ni okeru inasaku no køzø, vol. 1, ed. Furushima Toshio. Tokyo: Tøkyø daigaku
shuppankai.
Nangø-chø. 1985. Nangø-chø shi, vol 2. Miyagi ken, Nangø-chø.
Okabe Mamoru. 1997. ‘Tochi kairyø jigyø to gøi keisei.’ Nøson kenky¨, No. 85.
1111
2111 12 Organic farming settlers in
3 Kumano
4
5111
6 John Knight*
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 Introduction
4
5 Since the 1970s a new migration trend has emerged in industrial societies.
6 It is rural resettlement: the migration to the countryside of idealistic urban-
7 ites to enact a new way of life, usually centered on farming. With its
8 emphasis on recovering a connection to land and nature, this migration
9 expresses opposition to the dominant values of the larger urban-industrial
20111 society (for Britain, see Pepper 1991; for France, see McDonald 1989; for
1 the United States, see Berry 1992).
2 In Japan, too, small numbers of urbanites have been migrating to the
3 countryside to take up farming. In this chapter I describe an example of
4 such rural resettlement in the municipality of Hong¨ in the mountainous
5111 Kumano district of the Kii Peninsula, Wakayama Prefecture, where I
6 carried out ethnographic research in the 1980s and 1990s. I show how
7 the newcomers, dedicated to organic farming, pursue an alternative
8 lifestyle amid local neighbors. Their lifestyle is often a source of friction
9 with those neighbors, but it also holds out the prospect of contributing
30111 to rural revitalization.
1
2 Depopulation
3
4 In postwar Japan there has been a large-scale redistribution of the popu-
5 lation from the countryside to the cities. The effect of this outmigration
6 has been to depopulate rural Japan, especially the remoter upland areas,
7 resulting in demographically skewed rural populations consisting of a
8
9 * Portions of this chapter first appeared in ‘The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming
40111 in a Mountain Village,’ in Japanese Views of Nature: Cultural Perspectives,
1 ed. Pamela J. Asquith and Arne Kalland (London: Curzon Press, 1997),
2111 pp. 236–56.
268 John Knight
high proportion of elderly people and very few young people. This trend
is clear among the inland municipalities of the Kii Peninsula. Most local
youths have left for the larger cities of the Kansai region and beyond.
Between 1955 and 1995, these areas lost over half of their population.
In the postwar period, Hong¨ has been afflicted by large-scale outmi-
gratory depopulation. In 1955 the population of Hong¨-chø stood at
10,276 people, but by 1995 it had fallen to 4,310. Postwar depopulation
in Japan can be broken down into a number of phases characterized by
markedly different rates of decline. In the period 1965–70 alone, Hong¨
lost no less than one-fifth of its total population! Since this time the local
population has continued to decline in number, but at much slower rates.
Another feature of postwar depopulation is the discrepancy between the
figures for individuals and for households. While the individual popula-
tion of Hong¨ fell by over half, the number of households declined by
around 20 percent, from 2,263 households in 1956 to 1,754 by 1995.
This indicates that depopulation has been due, in general, to the outmi-
gration of younger family members rather than of whole families.
Consequently, there remains a large number of households, but they
consist mostly of older people.
Depopulation is caused, in the first instance, by large-scale outmigra-
tion. Official records show that in the period 1965–95, 12,356 people
outmigrated from Hong¨. While this averages out at just over 400 out-
migrants each year, the figure conceals enormous variations within the
period. The peak of outmigration was reached in 1967 when more than
one thousand people left, and the trough in 1991 when 177 people left.
However, there is a second phase of rural depopulation in which popu-
lation decline is principally accounted for by the low fertility rates arising
from the removal of the reproductive age bands from the local popula-
tion by outmigration. The birth rate in Hong¨ declined from 210 births
in 1956 to 27 births in 1995. The mortality figure, by contrast, has
remained relatively stable: 88 deaths in 1956, 61 deaths in 1995. Even-
tually, a threshold is passed whereby fertility rates fall below mortality
rates; in Hong¨ this point came in 1970, the first year when local deaths
exceeded local births: 69 to 65. This natural reduction of population is
one of the features of rural areas in advanced states of depopulation
(Mitsuhashi 1989: 23). Upland municipalities are faced with a crisis of
social reproduction.
Another feature of depopulated Japan is that, in addition to its (dimin-
ished) residential population, it has attached to it a secondary population
of migrant sons and daughters. Although Hong¨ has lost most of its natal
population through outmigration, many of these migrants remain con-
nected to their home town economically, ritually, communicatively, and
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 269
1111 through return visits. The main occasion for return-visiting is Bon, the
2111 great midsummer festival, during the three days of which the village
3 populations swell to three times their normal size. Such migrant ties can
4 make an important contribution to mountain village life – by helping
5111 local families to continue farming where otherwise they might abandon
6 it; by reinforcing, through ritual, the sense of family unity, despite the
7 reality of dispersion; and, insofar as they bind migrants to their natal
8 localities, by expediting future return-migrations. However, the migrant
9 connection can also contribute to the demoralization of the village. At
1011 the end of Bon the village returns to its earlier state of depopulated
1 normality. Within a few short days, the excitement of the crowded village
2 gives way to silence and stillness, a change which can produce a palpable
3111 sense of sadness and loneliness among villagers.
4 Another source of demoralization in depopulated areas is the environ-
5 ment. There is a proliferation of akiya or empty houses: my own survey
6 (of four Hong¨ villages) showed that 31 of the 148 houses, or 21 percent,
7 were unoccupied. There is also much abandoned farmland. In recent
8 decades the area of farmland in Hong¨ has diminished by two-thirds,
9 from 508 hectares in 1960 to 179 hectares in 1995. One consequence of
20111 this trend (accelerated by the government policy of rice field acreage
1 reduction, known as gentan) has been a large reduction in the area of
2 rice fields, many of which have been transformed into dry fields for the
3 cultivation of vegetables and other crops, while the old dry fields at
4 the forest edge have become scrubland or planted with conifer saplings
5111 to become, in effect, an extension of the forest. Consequently, throughout
6 upland Japan the forest has expanded areally. In Hong¨, forest has
7 increased from 90.7 percent of the municipal area in 1970 to 92.7 percent
8 in 1995. Although the increase in the forest area is proportionately small
9 (in the case of Hong¨ only 2 percent), this extra forest has a consider-
30111 able visual impact, making the village feel a dark, ‘lonely’ (sabishii)
1 place.
2 Depopulated villages, with their proliferation of empty, run-down
3 houses, closed-down schools, abandoned farmland, encroaching forest,
4 grown-over footpaths, and unkempt graveyards, are typically viewed as
5 depressing, ‘spooky’ (bukimi) places, places with no future, places
6 forgotten by the rest of the nation – ‘villages of death’ (shi no sh¨raku),
7 in the words of one observer (Aoyama 1994: 19–20). The decline of the
8 timber forests, many of which were in effect commissioned by the nation
9 in the aftermath of the war to regenerate the national timber resource,
40111 are a striking visual testament to the present-day national indifference to
1 the domestic forestry industry and the forestry villages dependent on it
2111 in places like Hong¨.
270 John Knight

Rural resettlement in Japan

There have been a variety of governmental responses to depopulation,
including infrastructural development, the attraction of industries from
outside, the development of new industries and new products, and the
promotion of tourism. But there has also been attention to population
management. Since the 1970s, municipal and prefectural governments in
Japan have actively encouraged return-migration. Prefectures have opened
offices in Tokyo to publicize what is termed the U-turn option and to
handle inquiries. Advertising campaigns have been carried out – through
posters in the Tokyo subway, print advertisements, television commer-
cials etc. – exhorting migrants from the regions to return to their furusato,
or natal place. Rural municipalities have even offered monetary incen-
tives to encourage return-migration.
Another response is to encourage direct migration to the village from
the cities. Prefectures have established offices in metropolitan areas to
field inquiries from would-be rural settlers of urban origin, especially
those willing to take up farming. These settlers are referred to as
‘I-turners’ (migrating directly from cities to villages), as opposed to
‘U-turners’ and ‘J-turners’ (migrating from small towns to villages). The
appeal to would-be new farmers is made through slogans such as ‘With
Your Hands, a New Agriculture’ (Anata no te de atarashii nøgyø o) or
‘Gather! For a Farming Adventure’ (Atsumare! Aguri adobencha e)
(Adachi 1994: 217–25). In particular terms, municipalities encourage
incomers to take up farming by offering low rent or rent-free land, interest-
free loans or subsidies for repair and maintenance work or for house con-
struction, and other forms of back-up, support and assistance. For example,
under the catchphrase ‘We give land away’ (tochi o agemasu), Honkyø-
mura in Yamaguchi Prefecture offers land to those prepared to come and
settle. Similarly, Tadami-chø in Fukushima Prefecture offers ‘to give one
tsubo [3.31 sq.m.] of land to you for free’ (tochi o hito tsubo tada de
sashiagemasu) (Kitsu 1994: 170). Usually, the land is not formally trans-
ferred immediately, but after a period of 10 or 20 years, but in the mean-
time only a nominal rent is charged. Aya-machi in Miyazaki Prefecture
lends municipally owned farmland to new farmers until they are able to buy
farmland of their own (Takeuchi 1993: 118).
Some prefectures have established offices in the major cities to field
inquires on rural settlement. The Ministry of Agriculture has launched a
scheme aimed at promoting farming-related rural settlement in remote
areas – the ‘I- and J-turn Farming Occupation Promotion Scheme’ (Hidaka
1996: 2). Many prefectures have established assistance and training
programs to attract ‘new farmers’ to their rural areas (see Asahi Shinbun
1993; Hidaka 1996: 188–97).
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 271
1111 According to the figures published in the Farming White Paper (Nøgyø
2111 hakusho), in 1996 some 3,570 people made inquiries about rural reset-
3 tlement (to the National New Farmers’ Guide Center and Prefectural
4 Advice Centers), and 384 people actually took up farming (NTK 1998:
5111 174). In the period 1988–96, the same source records that 1,556 people
6 took up farming (ibid.). However, much back-to-the-land rural settlement
7 bypasses these channels, and the actual scale of rural resettlement would
8 appear to be much higher. Thus since 1989 Nagano Prefecture alone has
9 attracted 2,000 settlers from the large cities (Hidaka 1996: 173). Further-
1011 more, the increasing trend is indicated by the fact that there were only
1 32 new farmers in 1988; 92 new farmers in 1990; 141 in 1992; 236 in
2 1994; and 384 in 1996 (NTK 1998: 174). In other words, twelve times
3111 more people took up back-to-the-land farming in 1996 than was the case
4 in 1988 (ibid.).
5 Well-known examples of new rural settlements include Oak Village
6 in Nagano Prefecture, which was established in 1974 by a group of ideal-
7 istic university graduates (Iwamizu 1989: 19–64) and in the north of
8 Wakayama Prefecture a new village was founded in the mid-1980s called
9 Banjiro Mura (‘Guava Village’).
20111 Often there is a clustering of new settlers in the same area, forming
1 in effect a network or group. But there are also many examples of lone
2 settlers – individual families which take up residence in a village amid
3 local neighbors. Many of the settlers are young, unmarried or married
4 and starting up a family, but there are also older people who have retired
5111 from their city jobs. One common characterization of new rural settlers
6 is that they are ‘double-cropping’ (nimøsaku): in addition to the ‘summer
7 crop’ that was their youth, they are undertaking a ‘winter crop’ for the
8 second half of their lives.
9
30111
1 The Kumano example
2 Since 1980 around 50 new families have come to settle in the Kumano
3 area, where they rent empty houses and unused farmland in remote village
4 settlements. Around 20 of these new families have settled in the upland
5 municipality of Hong¨-chø.
6 Hong¨ has undergone severe agricultural decline. As noted previously,
7 the area of its farmland has diminished by two-thirds. Some of the former
8 farmland has become housing land, but most of it has been planted over
9 with conifer saplings to become timber forest. Despite the fact that
40111 more than half the 1960 ricefield acreage has been lost through conver-
1 sion to other use, in 1995 over a quarter of the remaining Hong¨ riceland
2111 was unused. One of the causes of agricultural contraction in Hong¨ is
272 John Knight
outmigratory depopulation. The municipality has lost over half its popu-
lation in the postwar decades. But there has also been a repudiation of
farming among the remaining residential population. In 1955 two-thirds of
the working population of Hong¨ worked in the primary sector (farming
and forestry), but by 1990 this had fallen to 13 percent. In 1990 it was the
tertiary sector (including tourism) which accounted for nearly two-thirds
of the Hong¨ workforce. The combined trends of outmigration and de-
agrarianization create villages of empty houses and overgrown ricefields.
It is in these vacated rural spaces that the newcomers have come to settle.
The Hong¨ newcomers originate, for the most part, from the major
cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, but some are of regional origin (e.g.
Hiroshima, Shikoku and Aomori). They are typically young (in their twen-
ties and thirties), university-educated, and their past occupations include
company employee, designer, computer programer, gardener, livestock
farmer, baker, Buddhist priest and artist. Most practice organic farming,
and rent farmland on which they grow rice and a variety of vegetables
and fruits, and keep farm animals. Many grow and eat ‘natural food’
(shizenshoku) – and are referred to by locals as ‘the natural food people’
(shizenshoku no hito) – and generally eat brown rice, in contrast to local
people who share the usual Japanese preference of white rice. One or
two new families follow a macrobiotic diet.
The settlers tend to be critical of modern urban life more generally.
They have migrated to the Kumano region because it is different from
Tokyo and Osaka. Many explicitly state that it is ‘great nature’ (daishizen)
which has drawn them to Kumano. Some approach nature as an object
of worship, and make the notion of ‘gratitude’ (kansha) central to their
lives, particularly in relation to the food they grow and eat, and even
characterize their new way of life as a religious austerity or shugyø (see
Hidaka 1996: 157). A number of the Hong¨ settlers have visited India,
and have been influenced by Indian mystical and religious traditions
(including Bhagwanism).
The settlers are widely read in the area of alternative and ecological
literature, and are familiar with the ideas of thinkers such as Steiner,
Schumacher and Capra. Kumano is a mountainous region well-known in
Japan for its shrines and as a site of medieval pilgrimage, but some of
the newcomers represent the sacred character of Kumano in a global New
Age idiom of energy lines, vibrations and meridians. Like Stonehenge
and Mecca, Kumano is held to be one of the primary points in the earth’s
energy system. There is also a keen interest in indigenous cultures
such as the Ainu, ancient Celts and North American Indians who stand
as exemplars of a simple, natural lifestyle in stark contrast to modern
materialism.
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 273
1111 For many of the newcomers, the ‘peasant,’ like the indigenous hunter-
2111 gatherer, stands as a symbol of anti-materialism. The newcomers tend to
3 refer to themselves as ‘peasants’ or hyakushø. In Japanese, the term
4 hyakushø has certain negative connotations; as a noun it is readily paired
5111 with negative adjectives, such as mugaku na hyakushø or ‘ignorant
6 peasant’. Among Hong¨ people, the term hyakushø is sometimes invoked
7 as a form of self-deprecation – for example, in explaining why young
8 people leave the village (to escape ‘peasant’ life) or why farming sons
9 cannot find brides (because young women refuse to marry into a ‘peasant’
1011 family). Indeed, among larger farmers there is an effort to escape this
1 ‘peasant’ imagery and to define farming as a modern occupation. Kelly
2 describes how a particular part-time farmer ‘styles his work identity and
3111 routine as a “scientific and rational occupation”’ (Kelly 1986: 609), and
4 goes on to stress the importance of new machines in creating a new,
5 modern image of farm work in order to persuade younger farmers to stay
6 on the farm.
7 But among the Kumano settlers, the term hyakushø, with its asso-
8 ciations of a simple life of honest toil on the land, is invoked with a cer-
9 tain ironic pride. The ‘peasant’ lifestyle represents a kind of polar contrast
20111 to that of the salaried worker which many of them followed. In fact, a
1 common media term applied to rural settlers is datsusara or ‘salary-
2 shedders,’ a term encapsulating the point that the new settlers reject the
3 very status and lifestyle – of the urban middle-class salaried worker – to
4 which most young Japanese (including rural youth) aspire.
5111 For some of the newcomers, the ‘peasant’ lifestyle is synonymous with
6 autarky. They pursue a lifestyle of near ‘self-sufficiency’ ( jiky¨ jisoku)
7 in which household food is largely self-produced and participation in the
8 money economy minimized. Some explicitly eschew the ‘money econ-
9 omy’ (kahei keizai), viewing money as the central symbol of the
30111 materialistic society they reject. They occasionally sell their produce for
1 much-needed cash, but do so reluctantly. By contrast, their village neigh-
2 bors have become absorbed by the cash economy through waged
3 employment. Factory-employed farmers’ wives are no longer able to
4 contribute so much labor to growing vegetables and to making home-
5 made foods such as miso (bean-paste), tsukemono (pickled vegetables),
6 and umeboshi (pickled plums). As the newcomers were moving into the
7 countryside to pursue the goal of autarky, rural families were increas-
8 ingly ‘buying their vegetables in stores instead of growing them and using
9 processed foods instead of preparing them at home’ (Nozoe 1981: 224).
40111 In addition to this rejection of money, some new families have even
1 refused to send their children to local schools. One Hong¨ family opposed
2111 school attendance because they believed that the schools simply served
274 John Knight
to regiment the children and to inculcate into them the materialistic values
of the wider industrial capitalist society.
The settlers’ farming differs from mainstream Japanese farming in a
number of respects. There is a rejection of synthetic fertilizer – both
because it is believed to be harmful to the human body, and because
fertility is held to be something which should come from the soil itself.
Pesticides are similarly rejected on safety grounds. The newcomers are
therefore obliged to undertake the demanding task of weeding by hand.
The newcomers’ farming is largely unmechanized, in contrast to the mech-
anized farming of villagers. In some areas, there are even examples of
rural settlers who have revived the old practice of plowing their fields
with oxen (Saitø 1985: 38).
Some of the newcomers practice a more radical form of alternative
farming, informed by the ideas of Fukuoka Masanobu. Fukuoka’s ‘natural
farming’ method involves the rejection of tillage and weeding. Tillage is
eschewed in order to restore the integrity and fertility of the soil by
increasing organic matter, and there is no weeding because weeds are
seen as beneficial – naturally ‘tilling’ the soil through their roots and, on
dying, providing nutrients to micro-organisms in the soil (Fukuoka 1983:
48–53). According to this method, the farmer does not really ‘cultivate’
(tsukuru) at all, but assists with the crop-growth which is generated from
the powers of fertility intrinsic to the soil.
Some of the newcomers fertilize the soil with family waste. At a time
when villagers increasingly opt for flush toilets instead of non-flush
latrines (a symbol of the ‘smelly’ and ‘dirty’ character of the Japanese
countryside), the newcomers positively opt for the latrine because it allows
them to recycle night-soil as farm fertilizer in the traditional way. Another
source of organic fertilizer for their fields comes from the domestic
animals which many of the newcomers keep. Until the 1950s it was
common for most farming households to have one or two cows and some
chickens, but in the last few decades farm animals have largely disap-
peared from Japanese villages as machines replaced cows in farmwork
and synthetic chemical fertilizers were used in place of animal wastes.
But among the new farmers, animal droppings from chickens, cows and
goats are used as farmland manure.
Another feature of ‘natural farming’ is the linkage of forest and farm.
The use of the forest is seen as integral to earlier peasant farming.
Mountain forests provided green fertilizer for fields, fodder for animals,
as well as food, fuel and building wood. Fukuoka suggests that every
new farmer should be able to draw on some nearby forest for organic
fertilizer (1985: 137). Some of the new families in Hong¨ reject the use
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 275
1111 of modern forms of energy such as electricity and gas, preferring to use
2111 candles, oil lamps, and forest fuels such as firewood and charcoal. In this,
3 they imitate the prewar pattern of energy usage in rural areas.
4 Many of the Kumano settlers opt to grow different rice varieties (such
5111 as kogane masari), which grow better under chemical-free conditions,
6 and circulate seeds among each other. Earlier generations of Japanese
7 farmers developed their own family or village rice seed, which was better
8 suited to local conditions, but this has since been replaced by uniform,
9 high-yielding rice varieties scientifically produced by government labo-
1011 ratories and distributed by the Agricultural Cooperative. The newcomers
1 lament this loss of seed variety in rice farming.
2 In general, the newcomers grow the same range of crops as local fami-
3111 lies. But they also grow some crops which have been discontinued by
4 villagers. The prime example is the newcomers’ cultivation of a winter
5 crop of wheat on their ricefields. Again, this ‘double-cropping’ practice,
6 facilitated by the mild winters of western Japan, is associated with the
7 peasant farming of the past.
8
9
Impact of settlers I: Frictions
20111
1
Farming
2
3 Although the newcomers consider their farming to accord with the
4 ‘peasant’ tradition of the Hong¨ area, in fact this form of farming is a
5111 source of friction with villagers.
6 The newcomers’ farming can appear anti-social. Some of the new fami-
7 lies use animal waste and/or human waste as fertilizer on their fields, but
8 this can lead to local objections about the smell. Natural rice fields provide
9 a sanctuary for insects, but these insects do not necessarily respect the
30111 boundaries with other ricefields. Adjacent farmers sometimes find their
1 own fields adversely affected and their harvests reduced by the insects
2 and other pests in the newcomers’ pesticide-free rice fields. Some farmers
3 have found themselves under pressure not to rent to such settlers in
4 the future.
5 The newcomers’ farming methods are viewed as inferior. One basis
6 for this perception is the poor harvests of the newcomers – as much as
7 30 percent less than other farmers. But there are also doubts about the
8 quality of the rice produced. These are expressed in stories circulating
9 among villagers that, while wild animals such as wild boar damage the
40111 farms of villagers through crop-raiding, they tend to shun the farms of
1 the newcomers!
2111
276 John Knight
Newcomers find that they have restricted access to certain basic farming
inputs. Irrigation is one problem. The direct seeding methods employed
by some of the newcomers entail a particular timetable for cultivation
and specific irrigation requirements. Usually, village farmers coordinate
seedling transplanting and collectively irrigate their fields. But this
customary communal control of irrigation channels can lead to disputes
with the newcomers whose own farming is hindered by a lack of control
over irrigation (Fukuoka 1985: 179). Another problem arises with green
fertilizer from the forest. In some cases, newcomers find that the forest
is effectively out of bounds to them because of village requirements
to join the local forest association (kurinkai) as a condition of forest
access. For many of the cash-strapped newcomers the cost of doing so
is prohibitive.
There is a local perception of the settlers as ‘idlers’ (namakemono).
While some perform the demanding work of weeding the rice fields by
hand, others eschew weeding altogether, which, as they do not use weed-
killers, means that their fields become thick with weeds. This is something
which offends the villagers’ sense of what a field should look like and
reinforces the local impression of the settlers’ fecklessness and incom-
petence. Such misgivings are further fueled by tales of settlers who, rather
than actually bend down to transplant seedlings in the traditional back-
breaking way, opt to scatter the seeds (encased in small clay balls) by
hand (see Nakamura 1991: 14).

Self-sufficiency
The settlers’ pursuit of self-sufficiency, the reversion to a ‘lamp life’
(ranpu no seikatsu), recalls an earlier rural age, before the energy revo-
lution of the 1950s. The newcomers are seen to embrace a lifestyle of
virtual poverty that local people left behind decades ago. But this ‘peasant’
lifestyle is not one which evokes pride but is rather a source of embar-
rassment among locals. Pride attaches to the transcendence of that sort
of situation. In particular, this leads to concern about the children of such
families. One new family which became the object of gossip and criti-
cism apparently sent its children to school with a hinomaru bentø
(a simple rice meal with a single pickled plum), recalling the poverty of
an earlier age.
The newcomers’ pursuit of self-sufficiency, and rejection of waged
work, can also arouse suspicion among local people. The settlers may
aim for farming self-sufficiency, but everybody knows that, given the
quantity and quality of the land they farm, they cannot do so completely.
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 277
1111 Money is needed to pay their taxes and other local charges, to run their
2111 cars, to pay their telephone bills, to buy schoolbooks and uniforms for
3 their children and to purchase goods from the mobile shop. There was
4 speculation that one new family (which had satellite television) supported
5111 itself from the redundancy money of the husband’s father in the city.
6 Another rumor about this family was that the husband, who painted water-
7 colors, was selling his paintings for enormous prices during his occasional
8 visits to Tokyo, and that this explained how the family supported itself
9 in the absence of any obvious source of income. There are also rumors
1011 that this or that new family, despite their apparent poverty, have exten-
1 sive savings that they can draw on in times of need. Rural settlers in
2 other areas have been the object of similar rumors among their neigh-
3111 bours (e.g. Nakamura 1991: 244).
4
5
Impermanence
6
7 The new farmers tend to be perceived as impermanent by their village
8 neighbors. Typically, they rent rather than own the land they live and
9 farm on. One reason for renting is the reluctance of rural families to sell
20111 off land. As Iwamoto makes clear in chapter 10, land inherited from
1 earlier generations (‘made with the tears and sweat of ancestors’) is some-
2 thing that a family should endeavor to pass on to the next generation and
3 never sell. But even when a villager does sell land, other villagers are
4 customarily given first option to buy it. (In fact, in the 1980s and 1990s
5111 there has occurred a proliferation of rural land sales to outside buyers,
6 but this has been in the context of large-scale tourist development and
7 inflated land prices.)
8 A further reason for renting has to do with the settlers’ rejection of
9 land ownership and the restrictions on mobility and freedom that it entails.
30111 There has been a high turnover of newcomers on the Kii Peninsula and
1 elsewhere in Japan. Some find their new way of life harder than antici-
2 pated, and give up after a few weeks or months. Others positively opt
3 for successive migrations, moving on after a number of years to lead the
4 same kind of farming lifestyle in other regions. One new family in Fukui
5 Prefecture, for example, referred to themselves as ‘guerrilla peasants’
6 (gerira nømin) who must move on in due course rather than stay in one
7 place (Yamashita 1993: 113), while others refer to themselves as ‘trav-
8 elers’ (tabi no hito) or ‘ramblers’ (y¨hojin) (Takahashi 1984: 34). The
9 same spirit of adventure that brought them in may well take them out
40111 again.
1
2111
278 John Knight

Impact of settlers II: Contributions

Repopulation
Despite these problems, the new settlers have usually been positively
received by the depopulated villages they enter. They are viewed as bene-
ficial in a number of ways. First of all, even though their numbers are
small, they constitute an important demographic contribution to the depop-
ulated villages of Hong¨. They join in collective work tasks and duties
of the village (such as path-clearing, fire-fighting drills, and funeral prepa-
rations). They contribute to collective farming tasks such as the
maintenance of irrigation channels, the repair of protective fences (against
forest wildlife), and cooperative rice transplanting and harvesting. As
youthful newcomers to elderly villages, this physical contribution is often
of inordinate importance and highly valued. Their children boost the
numbers enrolled in the small village schools, and thereby help the locality
to resist the pressure for school closure.

Morale
One of the effects of rural depopulation is the demoralization of the
remaining population, as manifested most starkly in the high rates of
suicide reported among the rural elderly. In addition to the increase in
empty village houses, the abandonment and loss of farmland is a source
of particular dismay and distress. The original reclamation of arable land
is viewed in rural areas as a great ancestral achievement which is the
object of gratitude and a source of pride among village descendents. ‘For
generations, farmers had considered it a virtue to reclaim land for paddies,
a practice their forebears had begun centuries ago’ (Ni’ide 1994: 18).
Conversely, farmland that is overgrown or that has reverted to forest is
one of the saddest of sights for elderly villagers, and arguably a contrib-
utory factor in rural demoralization.
But the new occupancy of long-vacated houses and the renewed culti-
vation of fallow rice fields help to offset this despair by suggesting that
village decline may not, after all, be inexorable. The arrival of a new
family in a dilapidated old village often generates great excitement among
remaining inhabitants. For remote villages which had seemed destined to
abandonment, the appearance of new settlers offers much-needed hope
for the future.
The newcomers can also restore confidence in upland farming, some-
thing which has been seriously dented in recent decades. One major
problem for Kumano farmers is wildlife crop-raiding which, while a
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 279
1111 perennial threat to farmland, has greatly worsened with depopulation. In
2111 some cases, elderly cultivators are forced to abandon outlying fields in
3 the face of repeated depredations. New settlers too suffer such farm
4 damage (despite the comments to the contrary of some of their neigh-
5111 bors), and this is one of the reasons why they too may give up farming
6 and leave. But, in general, the presence of the newcomers, farming what
7 is often the most vulnerable farmland located at the forest-edge, can also
8 give the village new resolve to resist wildlife pests by erecting or repairing
9 fences and investing in wildlife repellents and scare devices.
1011
1
Public debate
2
3111 The settlers can also radicalize the villages they enter. The Kumano
4 settlers are often outspoken in their criticism of local industries such as
5 forestry, construction and tourism, and have even become involved in
6 protests against development initiatives such as road construction, dam
7 construction or the establishment of nuclear power stations. This activism
8 can lead to frictions with other villagers, especially where the perception
9 is created that the newcomers are not committed to the cause of rural
20111 development. But there are clear examples where newcomers, by alerting
1 the wider local population to the adverse environmental consequences of
2 certain exogenous development plans such as golf course construction,
3 have been the catalysts for a wider local protest (e.g. Moen 1997: 21–2).
4 At a time when ‘resort’ development is transforming land use in rural
5111 Japan on an enormous scale, with metropolitan capital buying up large
6 swathes of the Japanese countryside to build ski-grounds, golf courses
7 and condominiums, and encountering little resistance from the dwindling
8 numbers of rural dwellers, the new settlers constitute an important source
9 of resistance.
30111 The new settlers also oppose cultural standardization. They often bring
1 with them a great enthusiasm for local customs and traditions and other
2 aspects of village life and culture that are otherwise being discontinued
3 and forgotten. They are keen attenders of village festivals, and some even
4 undertake the documentation of village folklore. Settlers have played an
5 important role in perpetuating or reviving such traditions, and in stimu-
6 lating renewed local interest in them.
7
8
New ideas
9
40111 Settlers are often champions of the ‘natural’ farming lifestyle. There is
1 a certain amount of evangelizing among village neighbors. In Hong¨ a
2111 few local families have emulated their new neighbors and farm without
280 John Knight
chemicals, and many more have reduced their use of chemicals. Some
of the Kumano settlers, in an effort to diffuse their ideas more widely,
have established an induction course – nationally advertised in certain
alternative magazines – for other would-be rural resettlers to come and
learn how to lead a self-sufficient organic farming lifestyle. Settlers have
also become involved in debates on local development, in some cases
forcefully arguing that agrarian revival based on organic farming methods
is the only solution to the widespread problem of rural depopulation
(Yamashita 1993: 206–8).
Recent trends in the Japanese food sector have tended to facilitate a
more positive local reception for the settlers’ ideas about farming and food.
Organic farming is of increasing commercial importance in Japan. There
are widespread consumer concerns about the quality of purchased farm
products and the perceived overuse of chemicals by output-maximizing
Japanese farmers. One striking expression of such concerns is the rise in
membership of consumer cooperatives in Japan. In 1996, the 688 primary
Seikyø food cooperatives alone had a national household membership of
14 million (Moen 1997: 14). Many consumer cooperatives sub-contract
rural producers to cultivate organic food for their largely urban member-
ship (e.g. Inoue 1996: 62–8). Some rural municipalities offset the decline
in mainstream farming by converting to market-directed organic farming
(Takeuchi 1993: 117). The appearance of the new ‘peasants’ in rural Japan
coincides with this new consumer trend.
Even though the Kumano newcomers are generally not involved in
new rural enterprises, their organic farming ideas have had an impact
on the development of local commercial products, some of which
are marketed nationally as ‘chemical-free’ (munøyaku), ‘additive-free’
(mutenka) ‘health foods’ (kenkø shokuhin).

Publicity
Finally, the newcomers have attracted enormous mass media interest.
The Hong¨ settlers were regularly visited by journalists and filmed by
television camera crews. Rural resettlement is a phenomenon which
captures the imagination of the wider Japanese society, especially where
it involves young middle-class families willingly embracing the everyday
hardships of the peasant past such as woodstove cooking and machine-
less farming. Some of the Kumano settlers have become minor media
celebrities in their own right. This media attention is often encouraged
by municipal authorities keen to maximize national publicity for the
locality with an eye to tourist promotion and to the prospect of further
insettlement.
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 281
1111 Conclusion
2111
Japanese farming in the modern era has undergone a number of transi-
3
tions. One major transition was that from the prewar era of surplus
4
5111 extraction from farming to the postwar era of subsidization of farming.
6 But at the end of the twentieth century another transition was evident:
7 from the postwar ‘rural bias’ to the new phase of withdrawal of state
8 commitment to farming as manifested in their trends of agricultural liber-
9 alization, deregulation and even prospective de-subsidization. The most
1011 emphatic demonstration of this shift – and of the prioritization of Japanese
1 industry over agriculture – was in 1993 when the Japanese government
2 agreed to a timetable for rice imports at the conclusion of the GATT
3111 talks. Although state support for the regions continues in Japan, support
4 for farming lifestyles is effectively being withdrawn.
5 In the early 2000s the future of Japanese farming appears in great
6 doubt. There is a dire shortage of younger farmers, and a shortage of
7 brides for farmers. In recent times, the protesting farmer, descending on
8 Tokyo to protest against farm imports or about the bride shortage, has
9 become a familiar figure in the Japanese mass media. The Japanese
20111 farming sector appears incapable of reproducing itself into the twenty-
1 first century. Some media commentary suggests that agriculture is set to
2 succeed electrical appliances, industrial machinery, semi-conductors and
3 automobiles, to become the latest Japanese industry to be translocated to
4 other parts of Asia, with farmers in Thailand, Vietnam and China
5111 becoming the producers of the Japanese food supply, and even the growers
6 of Japanese rice (by growing Japanese rice varieties [ japonica]), in future
7 (Kubø 1994: 8).
8 The plight of Japanese farming readily accords with modernist expec-
9 tations of agrarian decline in advanced industrial society, whereby the
30111 peasant appears a doomed figure, unable to really exist in the present,
1 much less the future, and therefore condemned to a fate of historical
2 disappearance (Kearney 1996: chapter 3). This tendency has become
3 pronounced in postwar Japan, with its much-vaunted ‘economic miracle’
4 and its assumption of ‘economic superpower’ status, where the peasant
5 increasingly comes to occupy the past tense.
6 Yet twentieth-century Japan also provided a clear example of the way
7 in which the disappearance of agrarian lifestyles may co-exist with the
8 persistence of agrarianist motifs. One of the conspicuous features of
9 Japanese modernity has been the ideological incorporation of peasant
40111 motifs and imagery as a central constituent of national identity in the
1 industrial or post-industrial age. Along with the emperor and the family,
2111 the peasantry has served as an enduring symbol of cultural continuity and
282 John Knight
timeless national essence in the course of Japanese modernization. One
of the themes of postwar social science in Japan has been the continuity
of the agrarian past in the urban-industrial present in the form of latent
principles of social organization. As Harootunian points out, postwar
Japan represents a prime example of the way in which ‘values of an
agrarian order have been made to serve the requirements of a postin-
dustrial society’ (1989: 83). This transmutation of the peasantry into a
latent motif of the industrial order legitimates Japanese modernization
and, with it, de-agrarianization. Agrarianism in this abstracted form serves
‘to sanction, not to resist, the modernizing changes Japan has realized’
(Harootunian 1993: 216).
The new ‘peasants’ of Kumano have an ambivalent relationship to this
process of modernist incorporation of the agrarian. On the one hand, they
challenge the ‘teleologic master narrative’ (Kearney 1996: 73) of peasant
disappearance in the course of modernization. Rejecting the urban salaried
lifestyle in favor of the ‘peasant’ farmer, they invert – and potentially
de-naturalize – the dominant trend of post-Meiji Japan. Moreover, by
physically committing themselves directly to the land, they manifest the
possibility of a literal agrarianism – as lifestyle – and thereby challenge
the modern appropriation of the agrarian as a legitimating device for the
urban-industrial order. As ‘salary shedders,’ they reject Japanese indus-
trialism and, ipso facto, any latent agrarian legitimations of it. They
embody the possibility of a direct continuation into the present of Japan’s
‘peasant’ past.
Yet they cannot avoid becoming caught up in this national ideolog-
ical process of agrarian symbol-mongering. Despite the autarkic goals
animating much Japanese rural resettlement, in practice, as we have seen,
there is a degree of conscription of the new settlers – their ideas and
rhetoric, but also the settlers themselves – by their host localities to the
cause of market-directed rural development. Rural municipalities have
become aware of the instrumental potential of agrarian motifs in relation
both to commercial product development (‘hometown’ food, organic
‘health foods’ etc.) and to tourism, as is indicated most strikingly by the
emergence of what might be called agrarian tourism.
Fukuoka’s back-to-the-land vision holds that the Japanese people en
masse will reverse the urbanization process. According to this vision, a
new age of farming lies ahead, whereby the Japanese people will return
to the land. Many of the newcomers consider themselves at the vanguard
of a new trend which will become more important in the decades ahead,
as other urbanites realize the limitations of city life and opt to ‘return’
to the land. But, statistically, rural resettlement remains a minor phenom-
enon compared to ongoing agricultural contraction and rural depopulation.
 Organic farming settlers in Kumano 283
1111 Its principal significance is therefore probably not as rural repopulation,
2111 at least not on a scale commensurate with rural depopulation. Rather, it
3 is as a concrete statement of the possibility of an agrarian future for rural
4 Japan, one which represents a clear alternative to the current trans-
5111 formation of the Japanese countryside into a recreational space for
6 urban-industrial society.
7
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Nozoe Kenji. 1981. ‘At dangerous crossroads – Japan’s agriculture and food secu-
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NTK (Nøringyø taiken kyøkai). 1998. Nøgyø hakusho. Tokyo: NYK.
Pepper, David. 1991. Communes and Green Vision: Counterculture, Lifestyle and
The New Age. London: Green Print.
Saitø Emi. 1985. ‘Mø hitotsu no mirai shakai.’ Gendai ringyø No. 229. Tokyo:
Zenkoku ringyø kairyø fuky¨ kyøkai, pp. 34–9.
Takahashi Yoshio. 1984. Inakagurashi no tanky¨. Tokyo: Søshisha.
Takeuchi Kazuhiko. 1993. ‘Waga machi, mura o utsukushiku.’ In Mori-hito-machi
tsukuri, ed. Tanba no mori kyøkai (and Nakase Isao). Kyoto: Gakugei shup-
pansha, pp. 85–120.
Yamashita Søichi. 1993. Datsusara nømin wa naze genki. Tokyo: Ie no hikari
kyøkai.
1111
2111 13 Whither rural Japan?
3
4 Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 ‘Culturally deprived’ and ‘politically inexperienced.’ That was how the
4 authors of the Ministry of Agriculture report cited earlier by Iwamoto
5 described Japanese farmers in 1949, and it is more than likely that their
6 assessment was shared by most officials within that ministry, and within
7 the Japanese bureaucracy as a whole. This would become one source of
8 the negative evaluation of farmers in western scholarship thereafter.
9 Another would be the wartime propaganda of the Japanese state, which
20111 had stressed the countryside as the locus of those cardinal virtues of
1 loyalty and self-sacrifice that defined Japan’s national essence, and young
2 men of rural birth as the nation’s best soldiers. Also contributing would
3 be a few scholarly works by Japanese authors that had been translated
4 into English and works by a handful of western authors (most of them
5111 using the secondary literature in Japanese as their sources), which empha-
6 sized the ‘feudal’ character of prewar village life (Smith 2001: 355) and
7 the harsh exploitation – by landlords and/or by capitalism – of those who
8 actually tilled the soil. Other voices spoke for rural Japan and its resi-
9 dents, and by and large what they said was accepted as accurate. A rather
30111 different assessment emerges when farmers are allowed to speak for them-
1 selves, and when the logic of their actions at any time is explored.
2 That there were serious problems in the Japanese countryside in the
3 decades preceding Japan’s defeat in the Second World War is beyond
4 doubt, but what is striking is the extent to which farmers involved them-
5 selves individually and collectively in tackling those problems and in
6 achieving largely positive results. Nishiyama Køichi may have felt humil-
7 iated by his inability to pay the interest due on a loan from his main
8 landlord during the early years of the Great Depression, and he – like
9 most Japanese, both rural and urban – certainly supported the war effort,
40111 but neither his deference to those to whom he was beholden nor his
1 commitment to the war effort prevented him from securing title to the
2111
286 Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo
land he cultivated in 1945 and working to make the land reform a success
in his area. Indeed, one of the major themes to emerge from the first six
chapters in this volume is the vital ‘pre-history’ of the postwar land
reform. Rather than a sudden bolt from the blue, at a stroke destroying
‘the economic bondage which has enslaved the Japanese farmer to
centuries of feudal oppression’ (General Douglas MacArthur, quoted in
Dore 1959: 23), the land reform built upon longer-term trends in rural
society, constituting more of a denouement than a radically new depar-
ture. Landlord power had been eroding in many parts of Japan since the
early 1910s, a consequence both of the steady commercialization of
farming and of the increasing opportunities available to the actual culti-
vators of the land, especially the younger and literate among them, to
participate in local organizations and to work as the direct agents of agri-
cultural improvement.
In the development theory that has prevailed since the 1970s (see, for
example, Schultz 1988), a strong correlation has been noted between each
year of basic schooling that farmers in low income countries have com-
pleted and the productivity increases they have achieved. A similar cor-
relation can be detected in Japan in the early decades of the twentieth
century, where the number of years of compulsory elementary education
were increased from four to six after the Russo-Japanese war and where
the output of the major crop, rice, was up by some 14 percent over its level
in 1910–12 by the early 1920s (Table 2.1). Nor was that the only conse-
quence of basic education in rural Japan. Keeping detailed diaries may
have been an exceptional result, but studying farming techniques and keep-
ing accounts of farming operations was not. As Smith has shown, those
widely diffused abilities were of crucial importance in efforts to achieve
rural revitalization during the depression years. Even earlier, basic liter-
acy among local farmers had been utilized by the likes of Yamasaki
Toyosada to create a viable tenant farmer movement in Izumo and to con-
front local landlords with scientific evidence they could not easily ignore.
Yamazaki may have been unusual in his political (and legal) savvy, and
the farmers of Osogi village may have been unusual in including the stag-
ing of a play in their revitalization efforts in 1936 (not exactly what one
would expect from the ‘culturally deprived’), but farmers everywhere in
Japan, including a significant proportion of tenant farmers, were increas-
ingly taking charge of their own lives. They were reading newspapers and
magazines such as Ie no hikari, and discussing the issues of the day among
themselves. Even if only a minority of tenant farmers were able to take
advantage of the state program to establish owner-cultivators when it was
revised in their favor in 1943, all of them benefited from the rent controls
and the two-tier pricing structure for rice that the state had been constrained
 Whither rural Japan? 287
1111 to implement to assure food supplies during wartime. And their benefit
2111 constituted loss – of both income and influence – for landlords. The
3 latter had very little left to lose in 1945, although it is certainly true that
4 their dispossession was more thorough and uncompromising than would
5111 have been the case had Japan not been subject to the directives of an
6 occupying power.
7 A second theme is the nationalism of Japanese farmers in the prewar
8 era. To date, only the most extreme, violent and overtly militaristic forms
9 which that nationalism took have featured in the western literature on
1011 Japan: agrarianist ideologues like Katø Kanji and their committed
1 followers, some of whom participated in the assassinations of members
2 of the political and economic establishment in the interwar era, as well
3111 as army and navy officers, figure prominently, and there has been a
4 tendency to assume that what they defined as the solution to the ‘plight
5 of the countryside’ and the needs of Japan in the depression era were
6 widely embraced by poor farmers. As both Wilson and Mori have shown,
7 however, that was far from the case, and considerable prodding was
8 required in the 1930s to produce a relatively modest number of emigrants
9 to Manchuria. That said, it cannot be denied that most rural Japanese
20111 became increasingly aware of themselves as loyal subjects of the emperor
1 in the early 1900s – like youngsters in the contemporary West, they had
2 been taught patriotism as well as the ‘three Rs’ in school – and it is also
3 likely that many rural boys became increasingly keen to ‘accomplish
4 brave deeds’ as soldiers, as the village history quoted by Tsutsui suggests.
5111 Rural residents almost certainly participated more consistently than did
6 their urban counterparts in the observances of Emperor Jimmu’s acces-
7 sion, Army Day, Navy Day, and Japan’s victories over China in 1895
8 and Russia in 1905, in no small measure because there were far fewer
9 other events and entertainments available in the countryside to provide
30111 respite from work. As noted previously, they supported Japan’s cause
1 during the Second World War, contributing their labor to boost food
2 supplies, the metal objects they possessed to produce bullets, and their
3 sons. All this complicity in what proved to be a reckless spiral of aggres-
4 sion and conquest carried out in the emperor’s name does not sit
5 comfortably with the image of a basically gentle people ‘misled by a
6 handful of militarists’ that was embraced by the Japanese public soon
7 after Japan’s surrender in 1945, and that tension attests to the still unre-
8 solved issues of broader war responsibility with which members of that
9 public have only begun to grapple seriously since the death of the wartime
40111 Showa emperor in 1989. But there had been more to the loyalty of farmers
1 to that emperor than just supporting Japan’s ultimately disastrous and
2111 destructive actions abroad. Farmers had also used the rhetoric of loyalty
288 Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo
to encourage agricultural improvements, as in Harazato village, and the
rhetoric of ‘boundless imperial grace’ to legitimate protest against the
inequities of the status quo, as in Izumo. These quests for better lives
and livelihoods, and for justness and fairness in the treatment of all impe-
rial subjects, especially the most disadvantaged among them, should also
be taken into account in any final reckoning of the consequences of
popular nationalism, in this instance popular nationalism in the country-
side, on Japan’s development.
A third theme emerges from the chapters dealing with postwar Japan:
the effects of rapid economic growth during the ‘miracle’ years on farmers
and farming. As Jussaume has demonstrated, there had been part-time
farming in the prewar era, but back then the non-agricultural work which
members of farm households did had generally served to supplement
household income and to permit the maintenance or expansion of the
household’s farming operations. In the postwar era, part-time farming
rapidly increased and off-farm work eventually came to provide the lion’s
share of income in the majority of farm households. Farming itself increas-
ingly became a sideline for those households, a reversal of the relationship
between farming and non-agricultural work before the war. Not only for
them, but also for the minority of households who remained full-time
farmers, the countryside became a more complicated place, and its
formerly clear-cut function as the site for agricultural production became
blurred by other considerations.
Moreover, as the papers by Iwamoto, Kase and Nishida make clear,
the attitudes of farmers toward their land would change as the regional
development spurred on by rapid economic growth caused land price
inflation to one degree or another throughout the country. There had been
great enthusiasm for farming in the 1950s and early 1960s, and for making
the land more fruitful by all available means. State assistance for land
adjustment and other improvements was available on a scale that the
many farmers who had committed themselves to rural revitalization back
in the depression era could scarcely have imagined. But over succeeding
years, the fields that had formerly been seen as of crucial importance to
agricultural production steadily came to be seen as an asset, whose value
might well increase further if the right decisions about both farming and
development prospects were made. That there were relatively few secure
job opportunities for middle-aged farmers in a non-agricultural employ-
ment market that favored young school leavers and that little in the way
of state social security provision was then available served to intensify
the asset consciousness of the owners of farmland. As a result, the scope
for farming and for giving priority to the needs of farming at the local
level diminished further.
 Whither rural Japan? 289
1111 A fourth theme, focused on only by Økado but alluded to in passing
2111 by several of the other contributors to this volume, is the status of rural
3 women. While they have played a vital role in family farming and in
4 farm families throughout the twentieth century, their contributions have
5111 remained largely invisible to others, and in the recent international survey
6 carried out by the Ie no hikari kyøkai, the self-evaluations provided by
7 a sampling of them were strikingly low. The root of the problem would
8 appear to be significant vestiges of patriarchy, despite the abolition of
9 the patriarchal ie and the granting of equal rights to males and females
1011 in Japan’s postwar constitution and civil code. Both in the inheritance of
1 the family’s land and in decision-making about the management of its
2 farming operations, males continue to enjoy privileged status. Indeed,
3111 even on such matters as the management of the home and the upbringing
4 of children rural women do not seem to feel they enjoy much influence.
5 Inheritance of the farm by one successor may make sense, especially
6 when small holdings of land are involved, but the exclusion of daugh-
7 ters from consideration for that inheritance does not. Nor have the
8 messages delivered by inheritance practices and assumptions about who
9 should make key decisions been lost on rural daughters. Increasingly
20111 throughout the postwar era, they have sought to escape from constant
1 and unrewarded toil by leaving the countryside, or at the very least by
2 marrying someone other than a farmer. The ‘bride shortages’ that have
3 attracted attention recently in the West have already become ‘bride
4 famines’ in some parts of rural Japan. Put another way, the ‘pure and
5111 simple’ farming life that appeals to those relatively few urban women
6 who have participated with their families in rural resettlement, as
7 described by Knight in this volume, very definitely does not appeal to
8 many among those born and raised female in the Japanese countryside.
9 Which brings us to the present – and future – of rural Japan. According
30111 to one scenario, only the most marginal of farmers throughout the country
1 and the most marginal of farming communities, whether in the moun-
2 tainous hinterland or in isolated pockets within densely populated urban
3 districts, will disappear from now on. Elsewhere, farming will thrive, on
4 ever larger holdings (whether owned by their cultivators or jointly oper-
5 ated in some way, or owned and/or managed by corporations) and with
6 ever greater economies of scale achieved. In a much more radical scenario,
7 virtually all domestic farming will cease, except for a small number of
8 specialist operations catering to especially lucrative niche markets, and
9 Japan will rely on the international marketplace to supply the over-
40111 whelming bulk of its foods needs.
1 The latter reliance has already grown pronounced, it should be noted.
2111 According to a recent white paper (Nørin tøkei kyøkai 2000), Japan had
290 Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo
enjoyed a rather high 79 percent ratio of self-sufficiency in food (on a
calorie basis) in 1960, but that ratio tumbled during the high-growth years
that followed, and amounted to only 40 percent in 1999. This is markedly
below the self-sufficiency ratio of 60 percent in Switzerland, said to be
the lowest in Europe. Moreover, Japan’s experience in this regard is
almost exactly the opposite of Britain’s, where the ratio was at the low
level of 40 percent in 1970 but then rose to about 80 percent in 1999.
Not surprisingly, food security re-surfaced as a major concern of the
Japanese government in the late 1990s, and that concern contributed to
passage of the New Basic Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas in
1999, one aim of which was to boost Japan’s self-sufficiency ratio. There
is no intention to seek any dramatic increase in that ratio – as of March
2000, the goal of achieving just 45 percent self-sufficiency within ten
years had been announced – but there are a host of questions being debated
in policy-making circles and in the media relating to the implications of
relying substantially on imported food, not only for Japanese consumers
and the farmers elsewhere who supply that food, but also for the envi-
ronment. Precisely how can reasonable standards for the safety of food
be maintained in a globalized agricultural system, and the very supply of
adequate food stocks be assured in the event of natural or man-made
disasters elsewhere? Would the farmers of sub-Saharan African states and
other less developed countries in Asia and Latin America, whom some
economists see as the logical suppliers of food to the developed world
(for example, Blank 1998), be forever consigned to ‘low-wage depen-
dent’ agriculture, and their countries denied the development trajectories
that the once predominantly agrarian countries of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries have enjoyed? While food produced hundreds and
even thousands of miles from Japan may well be less expensive than
domestically produced food at present, even after transport costs have
been factored in, what is all the fossil fuel needed to get that food to
Japan by sea and by air doing to the ecosystems essential to life on earth?
And, getting back to Japanese consumers, what bearing do all those addi-
tional ‘food miles’ have on the quality of food available to them?
The decline in Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio after 1960 reflected
the very weakening of the bases for domestic agricultural production to
which we have already referred. There had been slightly more than six
million hectares of farmland in the country in 1960, but that area had
fallen by 20 percent to only 4.8 million hectares in 2000. And in the
latter year, farmers over the age of 65 accounted for fully 52.9 percent
of all those engaged in agriculture. Within the next ten years, those farmers
will have retired, and unless others fill their places, the area of land in
cultivation may well decrease even further. As noted by Nishida at the
 Whither rural Japan? 291
1111 end of Chapter 2, farming hamlets themselves were disappearing at the
2111 rate of 500 per year between 1990 and 2000, and that rate, too, is likely
3 to quicken, if fields are left abandoned after the death of their owners
4 and the population of the community falls below a critical point.
5111 To be sure, there are some prospects for the materialization of replace-
6 ments for the increasingly elderly Japanese farmers of the present. As
7 mentioned by Knight, a fairly small number of young people have
8 responded to advertising campaigns to take up ‘a farming adventure’ by
9 I-turning from the city to the countryside, and as he also indicates, there
1011 are probably greater numbers of U- and J-turning rural resettlers as well,
1 among them recent retirees from urban employment who have gone back
2 to their native village or to some other village in the region of their birth
3111 to resume the farming they experienced as youths. The long recession in
4 Japan since the early 1990s and the marked increase in unemployment
5 in the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy it has generated may
6 well contribute to these trends. But it is highly unlikely that such settle-
7 ment/resettlement alone will suffice to reinvigorate Japan’s agricultural
8 sector. To achieve that, considerably greater attention will have to be
9 paid to creating the conditions locally, regionally and nationally in which
20111 farmers sense, as did their predecessors in the decades before the war
1 and in the early postwar era, that opportunities exist for them to improve
2 their farming operations. Moreover, as the chapters by Iwamoto and
3 Økado indicate, considerable attention must also be paid to broadening
4 the still narrow definition of ‘public interest’ that has survived in most
5111 rural communities to include the Japanese public as a whole, on the one
6 hand, and to providing rural women with at least the same degree of
7 equality in family life and the management of familial assets that urban
8 women have gained, on the other.
9 Almost exactly thirty years ago, in the summer of 1973, the American
30111 biologist Paul Ehrlich described Japan as the ‘canary’ in the contempo-
1 rary industrialized world’s mineshaft, because it was then ‘the most
2 precariously overdeveloped nation’ of all, whose collapse would serve as
3 an early warning to other nations at work on the same natural resource-
4 intensive and polluting coalface (Mainichi Evening News June 8, 1973).
5 Japan managed that challenge, although not without difficulty or delay,
6 by the imposition of a modicum of pollution controls and by a progres-
7 sive shift to cleaner, knowledge-intensive industries. Now there is a new
8 canary on duty, in the mineshaft of the industrial/post-industrial world’s
9 most precariously marginalized agricultural sector. Whether it can – or
40111 to what extent, it should – be revitalized is now at issue.
1
2111
292 Nishida Yoshiaki and Ann Waswo

References
Blank, Steven C. 1998. The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio. Westport,
Conn.: Quorum Books.
Dore, Ronald P. 1959. Land Reform In Japan. London: Oxford University Press.
Nørin tøkei kyøkai. 2000. Zusetsu shokuryø nøgyø nøson hakusho. Tokyo: Nørin
tøkei kyøkai.
Schultz, T. Paul. 1988. ‘Education Investments and Returns.’ In Handbook of
Development Economics, vol. 1, ed. Hollis Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan.
Amsterdam, London, New York and Tokyo: North-Holland.
Smith, Kerry. 2001. A Time of Crisis: Japan, the Great Depression, and Rural
Revitalization. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Asia Center.
1111
2111
Index
3
4
5111
6
7
8
9
1011
1
2
3111 agricultural improvements 25–32, Economic Revitalization Campaign
4 68–71, 139–47, 244–5, 247–55, 136–7, 141–2, 143–4, 175–7; and
5 257–65; see also agricultural public mobilization for war 148; and new
6 works, land adjustment, land opportunities for leadership at the
7 reform, mechanization of farming local level 145–6, 176–7; and
8 agricultural public works: changing tenancy 150; see also Sekishiba,
9 attitudes of farmers toward 252–5, Showa Depression
20111 256, 257–65; to 1945 133, 247–9; education 62–3, 286
1 in the 1950s and 1960s 250–5; in emigration 178–9; to Brazil 159, 160,
2 the 1970s and 1980s 255–62; in the 165, 171; to Korea 178, 193–6
3 1990s 263–6; types of 245–7 emigration to Manchuria: critics of
4 agriculture and rural society in the 160, 169–71, 189–92; distribution
5111 modernist paradigm 2–3, 239–41, of emigrants by prefecture 183–4,
6 281–3 192–3; motives of emigrants
7 agro-tourism 149–50, 216, 279, 282 164–9; number of emigrants 156,
8 183, 197; portrayed as solution to
9 Basic Agricultural Law (1961) 153, rural poverty during the Showa
30111 231–3, 250 Depression 161–4, 181–3; role of
1 Boshin Rescript 62–3 Kwantung Army in promoting
2 159–60, 162, 171–2, 179–83
3 chō (defined) 5
4 corporate farming 214 farmers in other OECD countries 1–2,
5 213, 215, 217–18
6 datsusara (salary-shedders) 273, 282 farm households: declining number of
7 de-agriculturalization of rural 4–5; average holding of 5; see also
8 communities 216–18, 235–7, 288 ie, part-time farming, women in
9 dekasegi 210 farm households
40111 Depression see Showa Depression Farm, Mountain and Fishing Village
1 direct marketing of farm produce Economic Revitalization Campaign
2111 214–15, 241; see also organic see Economic Revitalization
farming Campaign
294 Index
First World War 12, 13, 14, 65, 86
food security 21, 22, 25, 202–4, 251,
289–90
Francks, Penelope 199–200, 204
Fukuoka Masanobu 274–5, 282
GATT Uruguay Round 245, 263, 281
gentan policy see rice acreage
reduction policy
hamlets (mura, or natural villages):
customs related to land use 222–3,
239–41; disappearance of 35–6,
290–1; property of 63–5; rivalry
among 63, 74, 76; solidarity of
residents 5, 87; and tenant unions
86–8, 97–9; tensions within 34–5
hatake (dry fields) 5–6
ie (house, household) 222–3, 235,
237–9, 241, 289
Ie no hikari (Light of the Home) 39,
51, 128, 131, 151–2
Imperial Rescript on Education 63
Japan Socialist Party (JSP) 3, 232
Katō Kanji 179–81
Kazama Kōemon 195
Korea: improvements to rice
cultivation in 248; Japanese
emigration to 178, 193–6
Kosakunin (The Tenant Farmer)
100–5, 110–11
land: attitudes of ie toward 222–3,
237–9; in cultivation 265, 290;
postwar price increases of 29,
229–30, 232–5; seen as an asset by
farmers 34, 232–3, 235, 288; seen
as a site of agricultural production
by farmers 34, 288
land adjustment (kōchi seiri) 12, 25–6,
92, 246–7, 251–2, 260–1, 265–6
landlord–tenant relations: and
agricultural public works before
1945 247–9; in the early 1900s
10–11; in the Economic
Revitalization Campaign 150; in
Izumo in the 1920s 92–3; see also
tenancy disputes, tenant unions,
land reform
land reclamation 29–30, 203, 249
land reform 24–5, 206–7, 223–31,
241, 286
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 3,
32, 206–7, 232, 234–5
local improvement movement (chihō
kairyō undō): aims of 60–1;
educational reforms during 62–3;
and hamlet common lands 63–5;
improvements to agriculture
during 68–71; and organization of
rural youth 71–4; political
consequences of 74, 75–7; shrine
mergers during 65–8; and
strengthening of village finances
74–5; see also nationalism
Manchuria see emigration to
Manchuria
Matsuoka Toshizo 193–5
mechanization of farming 27–8,
207–10, 246–7, 250, 256–7
Minseitō 20, 130
mura (natural villages) see hamlets
Nagata Shigeru 166–7, 168
nationalism: and emigration to
Manchuria 165–9; in the prewar era
287–8; promoted during the local
improvement movement 62–3, 64,
65–7, 71, 73–4; in the tenant
movement in Izumo 89, 99–100

Natural Resources Section (NRS)
228–9
New Basic Law on Food, Agriculture
and Rural Areas (1999) 290
New Village Campaign 152
Nishiyama Kōichi 7, 19, 24–5, 29,
33–4
Nōson fujin (Rural Women) 46–8
Occupation (1945–52) see land
reform, Natural Resources Section,
reform of daily life
organic farming 272, 274–6, 279–80
Oriental Development Company
(Tōyō takushoku kaisha) 193
part-time farming: before the Second
World War 8–9, 11, 12–13, 64,
204, 205; since the Second World
War 200–1, 209–13, 215–16,
255–6, 288
political terrorism in the 1930s 132,
180, 287
politicization of farmers 18, 27, 30–2,
75–7, 108–113
pluriactivity see part-time farming
postwar ‘economic miracle’ 28–9,
209–11; see also urbanization
Public Corporation for the
Development of Manchuria
(Manshū kaitaku kōsha) 183
reform of daily life: during the
Occupation 51–3; during the Showa
Depression 45–8, 151–2
rent adjustment (todai seiri) 106–7
rice 5–6, 201–4, 244, 246;
commodification of 13–14, 204;
declining consumption of 202, 255;
yields per tan 13, 250–1; see also
food security, rice acreage
reduction policy
Index 295
rice acreage reduction policy 32, 33,
35, 255
rice inspection 91–2
rural resettlement 215, 216, 267,
270–1, 282–3, 291; in Hongū-chō
271–80
Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) 60, 63,
66, 68, 74
Saemaul Undong (New Community
Movement) in South Korea 154
san-chan nōgyō 211–12, 215,
217–18
‘Santanbatake no kyōdai’ (‘The
Brothers of the Three-tan Field’)
127–8, 129, 149, 150
Second World War: impact on
farmers and farming 21–24, 48–51;
wartime legislation 22
Seiyūkai 20, 132, 193
Sekishiba 137–8; and Economic
Revitalization Campaign 138–41,
142–3, 144–5, 147–8; postwar
history of 149–50; and reform of
daily life 151
Serizawa Kunio 73–4
Showa Depression 19–21, 45,
130–2, 157–8; debt adjustment
134–5; public works during 133;
see also Economic Revitalization
Campaign, emigration to
Manchuria
shrine mergers 65–8
Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) 63,
66
Taiwan: improvements to rice
cultivation in 248; Japanese
emigration to 178; rural economic
revitalization in 152
tenancy disputes 14–18, 107–8;
see also tenant unions
296 Index
tenant unions: activities of 80–2,
83–6, 88–9, 105–13, 115–16;
efforts by the state to control
114–18; leadership of in Izumo
93–8; number of 80; structure of
82–3, 86–8
Togashi Naotarō 187–9, 197
Tsuchi (The Soil) 10–11
urbanization 29–30, 131, 210, 216,
255, 261
villages see hamlets, local improve-
ment movement
women in farm households: attitudes
toward farming 55–7, 289; as
managers of the home 45–8, 51–3;
and ownership of property 57–8; in
postwar farming 58, 211–12, 215–16;
during the Second World War 48–51;
tasks performed by, prewar 40–5;
working hours of, prewar 39–41
Yamasaki Toyosada 93–7, 99–100,
111–14, 116
Zenji Nisshi (Diary of Zenji) 8–10,
11–13, 16